Posts Tagged ‘Mozilla Firefox’

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Mozilla launches 2010′s last Firefox 4 beta

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Mozilla launches 2010′s last Firefox 4 beta

Mozilla shipped Firefox 4 Beta 8, the last preview it will release this year before it makes a run toward a final version in 2011.

Originally slated to appear last month, then delayed until December, Beta 8 of the open-source browser first appeared today, a day later than planned, on Mozilla’s official download site and as updates for existing preview users.

The newest beta includes simplified setup for Firefox Sync, Mozilla’s bookmark, password and open tabs synchronization service; additional Windows and Mac graphics card support for WebGL, the under-development standard for 3-D graphics rendering; and a revamped extension manager that silently updates any installed add-ons .

According to Mozilla, Beta 8 also sports more than 1,400 bug fixes or changes from its predecessor, which launched six weeks ago .

Although Mozilla once said it would wrap up work on Firefox 4 this year, delays this fall forced the company to push the final release date into 2011 . Currently, Mozilla plans to produce at least two more betas — it won’t finalize a timetable for Beta 9 until after Jan. 1 — and then a series of “release candidates” before greenlighting the code.

Beta 8 also was slightly faster than Beta 7 in rendering JavaScript.

According to quick tests run by Computerworld using the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite, Firefox 4 Beta 8 is about 5% faster than its forerunner.

Mozilla had previously added other major features to Firefox 4, ranging from a new JavaScript JIT (Just In Time) compiler, dubbed “JagerMonkey,” in Beta 7; hardware acceleration in Beta 5 last September; and a new tab manager, dubbed “Panorama,” in Beta 4 a month earlier.

Alongside Beta 8 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Mozilla today also issued an updated beta of its mobile browser, which runs on Android-powered smartphones. Changes in the mobile edition of Firefox were more noticeable, and included revisions to the user interface, changes to the add-on discovery process, and like its desktop cousin, streamlined Firefox Sync setup.

Firefox 4 Beta 8 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from Mozilla’s site.

Source:goodgearguide.com.au

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Microsoft Delivers HTML5 Video Plug-in for Firefox

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Microsoft Delivers HTML5 Video Plug-in for Firefox

Microsoft has released a new add-in for Firefox that supports HTML5 video on Windows.

As part of the interoperability bridges work Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team does, the company created a new Firefox add-on that enables Firefox users on Windows to play H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using the built-in capabilities found in Windows 7.

In a Dec. 15 blog post, Microsoft’s Interoperability team said Microsoft has already been offering for several years now the Windows Media Player plug-in for Firefox, which is downloaded by millions of people a month who want to watch Windows Media content. This new plug-in, known as the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in, is available for download at no cost.
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Fasten Your Seatbelts – Firefox 4 Beta adds new JavaScript power and faster graphics

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Fasten Your Seatbelts – Firefox 4 Beta adds new JavaScript power and faster graphics

A new release of Firefox 4 Beta is now ready for you to download and test! This release boosts performance in some important ways: it adds the JägerMonkey just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler; adds more support for hardware-accelerated graphics, as well as hardware acceleration for Windows XP and Mac OS X; and enables 3D capabilities, without the need for plug-ins, with WebGL.

This means pages load faster, interactions with websites are snappier and the Web is just a lot more fun. For developers, this means you can build richer high-performance Web applications and explore the world of 3D graphics, inherent to the Web.

Also, the Add-ons APIs for Firefox 4 are now stable, so if you are an add-on developer, now is the time to update your Firefox 3.6-compatible Add-ons to support Firefox 4.

What’s New:

Boosting JavaScript Performance with JägerMonkey
JägerMonkey is an invisible but powerful addition to Firefox 4 Beta. The Firefox SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine now incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, which, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter, add up to speeds that really show off today’s rich Web apps. You’ll notice this in faster start-up time, improved page-load speed and the performance of Web apps and games.

Firefox 4 Beta is really fast. Here’s how the latest beta compares with Firefox 3.6 and previous versions of Firefox 4 Beta on various JavaScript benchmark test suites:

Firefox 4.0 Beta Performance Graph

Firefox 4.0 Beta Performance Graph

Boosting Graphics Performance
This update to Firefox 4 Beta incorporates hardware-accelerated graphics into the final rendering of a website — referred to as “compositing.” This enables websites to load and respond faster to rich and interactive content like Web games, apps or photos. On Windows (including Windows XP), hardware acceleration is done using DirectX technology; on Mac OS X, it’s done using OpenGL.
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Tin Eye Offers Reverse Image Search

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Tin Eye Offers Reverse Image Search

Have you ever found a really cool image, but it was just too small? I have. Tin Eye is a reverse image search tool that solves that problem. Simply enter the image URL or upload an image from your computer to their website and it searches the web an image similar to the source.

A plugin has been available for Firefox users for sometime, but an extension for Google Chrome is finally available. The add-on incorporates a “Search Similar” context menu item when right-clicking on an image. Clicking that option will launch Tin Eye’s search page, offering results in a new tab.

The page includes some useful stats such as number of images searched, time it took, and even makes it easy to return to the original image. The search page also offers a few sorting options to make finding the image you want easier. The default sort organizes items to feature the largest images first, but sort options for “Best Match” or “Most Changed” are also available. There are also sharing features built-in for sending results to Twitter, Facebook, and Email.
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Mozilla: Some Mac Users Will Not Get Firefox 4 Final

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Mozilla: Some Mac Users Will Not Get Firefox 4 Final

Mozilla program manager Mike Beltzner has noted that the next version of Firefox is not supported by PowerPC computers. The update will not offered automatically to users of PPC Macs, going by Beltzner’s post.

In response to a tester’s acknowledgement that Firefox 4.0 beta 4 build 3 was inoperable on old Powerbooks, Mike Beltzner said “This is known.”

“Bugs are on file, and the update will not be offered to PPC users,” he added.

Beltzner went on to elaborate: “I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC for Firefox 4. More on that as I get the data,” he said.

“We do have tests running on PPC, but nobody seems to be looking at them,” Mike concluded.

It is known that two separate technologies in Firefox 4 are standing in the way of a PowerPC build.

One of them is the OOPP isolated plugin system. This prevents browser extensions from slowing down the browser.

Then there is the just-in-time (JIT) compiler for the new JaegerMonkey JavaScript engine. This is supposed to speed up JavaScript compilation.

Neither of the two standards are being tested with PPC machines in mind.

New additions in Firefox 4 Beta 4 (the latest version available for download), include a new feature that gives users a visual overview of all open tabs. This allows users to sort out their tabs by groups.

Used to be called Tab Candy, the function is now referred to as “Firefox Panorama,” according to developer Aza Raskin, who designed the tool.

An experimental API is also included in the new release. It provides more efficient Javascript animations, Mozilla says.

Additionally, the browser now supports the HTML5 video “buffered” property, while Firefox Sync is now included by default.

Firefox 4 Beta 4 is available in 39 languages, and incorporates all the changes from the previous beta. Softpedia readers can download the latest beta and stable versions of the browser using the link below.

Source:news.softpedia.com

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