Firefox 2.0 RC3 RELEASED!

Yep, you read that right the final milestone (before the main release) for Firefox 2 has arrived! I am a little surprised this came out today as the Developers Calendar had said on Tuesday. But I had a feeling it would today just based on the prior release patterns.

You can download via the Mozilla FTP or go over to CyberNet News and use Ryan’s ‘download widget’ to ensure you get the right version. While you are there check out the link for the Firefox Launch Party to see if there is going to be one in your area (or you can always organize one if there isn’t).

The official download page and release notes should be updated by this time as this is usually done around 5:00 PM PDT.

Firefox 2.0 RC3 Status + IE7 Updates

Last week I reported in my IE7: October 18th? entry via CyberNet News, one Microsoft Blogger had said IE7 was to come out on October 18th. Well, thanks to an alert reader at Go Firefox!, I have learned, the blogger has removed all references to the October 18th release date. However, I did notice this particular item still remained in the article:

“Microsoft recommends that enterprises are prepared for automatic delivery by November 1^st“

So it sounds like the delivery via automatic updates is still on for the first part of November. But what about releasing to the Microsoft website for those users who can’t wait to download and install IE7? Did Microsoft get cold feet? Are there some potential issues (such as with Vista, the EU and anti-trust) that Microsoft is trying to workout and keep quite? Are they going to wait and see what Mozilla does in the coming week? Do they want to make sure IE7 is the ‘new kid’ on the browser block and release it after Firefox 2?

Speaking of Firefox 2, the next milestone, Release Candidate 3 is still set for tomorrow (10/17/06). This is as close as we are going to get the final release of Firefox 2. In fact if all goes well with this release, it will become the final release. Still haven’t seen an exact date pinned down for the final release but I am guessing somewhere around October 24th to as late as November 1st. I am still going by the fact that there are no more ‘Bon Echo Status Meetings’ scheduled on the Mozilla Developers Calendar after October 24th.

These next couple weeks should really be interesting as we wait to see what Microsoft and Mozilla are going to do.

Firefox 2.0 Feature Preview: Search Engine Alert

Not sure when this feature was added but once in a while I noticed while I was on a certain site the Goggle logo on my search bar would glow blue (see below). After some reading on mozillaZine Firefox Builds forum I found about that this interesting feature in the thread: Blue glow on Google dropdown

“The glow is there to indicate that the page you’re visiting has it’s own search engine. If you click on the search engine dropdown you’ll notice the “Add search engine…” dialog for you current page.”

While I was on Wikipedia, I noticed the Google Icon in the search bar had the ‘blue glow’. So I clicked the drop down arrow and was given the option to add Wikipedia to my search engine list.

Site Has Own Search Engine

 

Site Does Not Have Own Search Engine