Software

Mozzila released the final version of Firefox 3.0 today and you can download it at Mozilla.

Available today in approximately 50 languages, Firefox 3 is two to three times faster than its predecessor and offers more than 15,000 improvements, including the revolutionary smart location bar, malware protection, and extensive under the hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser.

While I've been talking about Firefox 3 since late 2006, I have to admit that I haven't been into Firefox 3's development as much as I did with Firefox 2.  While there were some bumps on the way with the alphas and betas, Firefox 3.0 is definately a well polished product (I'm using it as I write in this post).  My first two impressions of Firefox 3 is that it is fast and that I don't quite get the awesome bar.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available.  The update is a security and stability release and this explains why Firefox users might have been seeing more crashes than usual.

Fixes for security problems in the JavaScript engine described in MFSA 2008-15 (CVE-2008-1237) introduced a stability problem, where some users experienced crashes during JavaScript garbage collection. This is being fixed primarily to address stability concerns.

I knew something wasn't right with my favorite Web browser.  You can download the latest Firefox (and Thunderbird) at Mozilla.

I am saddened by continued reports that support for Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird, continues to diminish. From DesktopLinux:

The Mozilla Foundation's press release focused on the Firefox 2.12 security fixes. The Foundation also reported, though, in its MFSA (Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory), that these same bugs had been fixed in the fictitious Thunderbird 2.12...

...Still, it is upsetting that Mozilla reports that these problems have been fixed in a version of Thunderbird that doesn't exist. The latest version of Thunderbird is 2.09.

Confession: I never knew how much there was to Photoshop until my wife, the photographer, decided to move over to the digital age. During the course of our marriage, while she has excelled in the art of digital photography, as well as Photoshop, I have remained the amateur.

Luckily, Corrie Haffly at Sitepoint has started a series of articles for geeks like us who still think all we need on our Websites is any of the eight colors we learned when we were five. (By the way, I got a star on my paper in kindergarten...red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, and black!)

The visual style that has come to be associated with the term Web 2.0 has exploded in popularity; everywhere you look, corporate sites, web service sites, ecommerce sites, and even personal blogs are making use of clean, minimalist design coupled with fancy graphic effects. If you'd like to jump on the bandwagon, this is the article for you!

As we mentioned more than a month ago, Firefox 3 is expected to sport a new look. Some of the more popular online magazines are starting to take notice and helping to fan some excitement on the new look. On a blog at Wired a Firefox 3 related post can be found, Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3's Sleek, Sexy New Digs.

Some of the changes planned for the final release of Firefox 3 include a complete visual makeover with platform-specific skins designed to integrate the look of Firefox into your OS of choice.

Michael Kaply is starting a new series on the use of Mozilla's Firefox as enterprise software.  In Part 1 he discusses the obstacles for Firefox to to be adopted in the enterprise.

As Firefox gains marketshare, there comes a point where increasing that marketshare depends on the adoption of Firefox in large enterprises. This article investigates what type of issues arise when supporting Firefox in a large enterprise, and what can be done to solve those issues.

The primary areas I will address are:

Yesterday, InfoWorld posted an article on the yet-to-be-released Firefox 3. The article is titled, "Firefox 3.0 opens door to Web apps, Mozilla says".

If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right now being souped up by an anxious group of gearheads.

When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

This is an interesting debate. Is Microsoft really being a monopoly when it comes to securing and patching its own operating system? Shouldn't we expect to be able to buy a computer operating system that is secure so we don't need anti-virus software in the first place? It is interesting, the marketplace for consumer products that Microsoft inadvertently created is upset at Microsoft for reducing the need to buy third-party. So what, consumers should have a less secure operating system and be required to buy a third party anti-virus software? BusinessWeek reports: