Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 was released on December 30th, which was about a week earlier than scheduled. Users will be prompted for an automatic update within the next 72 hours.Those wishing to upgrade now can do so via the Help Menu, Check For Updates option or by downloading the latest release at getthunderbird.com. Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 contains many security fixes and the full details can be found in the Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 Release Notes.
Source: Mozilla Developer News
In early July came the official word The Firefox 3 Download Day set a world record with 8,002,530 downloads within the 24-hour period. On July 1st, Firefox 2.0.0.15 was released. In mid-July came the first update for Firefox 3, Firefox 3.0.1 which as is regular practice was also coordinated with the release of Firefox 2.0.0.16. At the end of July, Mozilla released the first Alpha of Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko).
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
The Book of Mozilla is an ‘Easter Egg’ that will display a biblical like passage depending on which version of Firefox or other Gecko/Mozilla based browser you are using. The above passage describes, July 15, 2003, the day AOL shut-down Netscape browser division and the launch of the Mozilla Foundation and thus the rise of the Phoenix (predecessor of Firefox) browser.
Plenty of add-ons related posts in July. To start, a look at the 50 Add-ons…Change The Way You Surf The Web. Folks who upgrade to the Firefox 3.0.1 release were shocked to discover many of their add-ons were disabled. This massive headache was caused by a minor coding boo-boo by add-on developers.
Also took an in-depth look at these four add-ons:
As I reported earlier, I was having an odd crash when I was switching into ‘Visual’ mode (or even trying to post new or edit) in the WordPress editor. After some experimenting and a whole lot of browser crashes and restarts I discovered some interesting things.
Well That’s Odd
I was offered another updated to latest nightly build. After I restarted I copied the build id for reference: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081224 Firefox 3/3.0.3pre ID:20081224042714. I noticed something odd earlier about that build ID, I’ll get to this later. The browser still crashed whenever I tried to do a post in Visual mode.
So, the first step was to run Firefox 3.1 with a clean profile and what ya know it did not cause a crash when I went into WordPress. Next I reloaded with my current profile and disabled all my add-ons. Restarted and went to WordPress without a crash. So now comes the fun task of re-enabling a couple extensions at a time to see if I could reproduced the crash. Didn’t take long, the first two to get reactivated were About:Config and AdBlock Plus. I was thinking may be it was the about:config extension so I disabled it, restarted and went into WordPress and Firefox crashed. The only add-on enabled was AdBlock Plus.
Well, that definitely narrows down the culprit. So I went to AdBlock Plus on AMO. AMO shows AdBlock Plus was last updated on December 1st, so I thought may be my install was bad. I uninstalled and reinstalled the add-on and upon trying to post in WordPress, Firefox crashed.
Back to the clean profile. I did a fresh install of AdBlock Plus (with no filters) and this did NOT produce a crash. However upon installing the first set of filters, Easy List, Firefox crashed when the WordPress page tried to load. Removed the Easy List filter and restarted Firefox with the clean profile again and the WordPress page loaded fine. Next I installed the Easy Element filter set, restarted Firefox again and no problems. Okay, so it is the filter set that is causing this issue. Interesting.
So, back on my default profile I deleted the Easy List filter and tried going to the WordPress editor and Firefox crashed. Well, I wasn’t expecting that! So after restarting Firefox I take a look at my AdBlock Plus configuration and noticed a set of custom filters which turned out to be for Delphi Forums. I rarely go over there anymore anyway so I removed all of those and tried going to the WordPress editor. Again Firefox crashed as if on demand. Well, the time had come to take some drastic measures. First I uninstalled AdBlock Plus again, then I opened up my profile folder and removed the AdBlock Plus folder from within there.
At this point on my default profile there is no trace of AdBlock Plus. Reinstalled AdBlock plus, restarted Firefox and went to the WordPress editor page, no crash. Okay, so far so good. Next step I went in and installed the Easy Element filter set. Went back into WordPress played around in the editor switching between Visual and HTML modes. No crashes. Now for good measures, I even restarted Firefox a couple times. Each time the browser held up when I went into the WordPress editor.
Fake ID?
Now, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081224 Firefox 3/3.0.3pre ID:20081224042714, seemed odd. The Gecko version (1.9.1b3pre) is correct but something keeps changing my user agent to Firefox 3/3.0.3pre. I confirmed this by going into about:config and doing a filter for ‘useragent’ and noticed the entry general.useragent.extra.firefox was in bold meaning it has been changed. When I reset the value it changed from Firefox 3/3.0.3pre to Shiretoko/3.1b3pre. I had done this earlier too, but something keeps changing the value. Not that big of a deal to go hunting this down. For the record though I am running Shiretoko/3.1b3pre NOT Firefox 3/3.0.3pre.
Due to the holidays there won’t be many blog posts for the remainder of this year. However, I am please to announce the BYIR: July, August & September 2008 post will be published on Christmas morning! This is about 3-days ahead of the originally scheduled date. There will not be any more Release Recap posts until January 10th as there are no planned releases for the remainder of this year. There will likely be a Mozilla Project Weekly Status post for the December 29th meeting. As of today, the BYIR: October, November & December 2008 post is schedule to be published on January 4th, but if time permits may be published earlier.
Now this is odd…I’ve started having Firefox/Shiretoko (3.1) crashing whenever I switch from the ‘HTML’ back to the ‘Visual’ view in WordPress. At first I thought it had something to do with the BYIR: July, August & September 2008 post I had been working on as this was when I first started having the issues. Even after making sure I had the latest build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081223 Shiretoko/3.1b3pre), I am still having issues. I might have to try to load Firefox with a clean profile later on and see what happens.
Fx 3.0.6 – Status: Tree Opening Pending
Fx 3.1b3 (Shiretoko) – Status: In Development
TBird 3.0b2 (Shredder) – Status: In Process
Complete Meeting Notes
April brought several add-on reviews:
Three new Get a Mac ads were released in April. PC seems to be under a bit of stress especially about Microsoft Office on Mac. He then tries to relax with some Yoga, but that did not work out very well. Finally in a therapy session with Mac, PC has a breakthrough but even that doesn’t help.
The Microsoft/Yahoo drama continues into April. Yahoo is talking about partnering itself with Time Warner or Google or another company other than Microsoft. April 26th was the deadline Microsoft had set before they would go directly to Yahoo’s shareholders. So was it Deal or No Deal? Rumor Has It Microsoft was meeting with Yahoo shareholders on April 30th.
More from Microsoft. The Microsoft Surface computer aka ‘Big-Ass Table’ is no longer vaporware. In mid April, select Atlanta, San Antonio, San Fransisco and New York City AT&T wireless stores started using the tables.
Having already been extend from January 31st, Microsoft reminded us Win XP would be going away on June 30th. Windows XP will no longer come pre-installed on most new PC’s. There is however an exception, “ultra-low cost” machines. Speaking of Windows, Microsoft released a very bizarre ‘Marketing Video‘ featuring Microsoft’s chief operating officer Kevin Turner for Vista SP1.
Mozilla finally released Firefox 3 Beta 5, this was finally the last beta release for Firefox 3. Also later in the month, Firefox 2.0.0.14 was released, fixing some crash related issues with the JavaScript garbage collector. Also in April was news of a minor AMO update coming with AMO 3.2.1.
In late April I received and alarming comment regarding the newest version of Foxit (PDF) Reader. It appeared Foxit had gone the way of Fast Stone and so many other once freeware programs, to a paid only version. Turns out Foxit Reader is still Free, just takes some hunting to find the free version on their site.
A quick update on OpenOffice.org Docs in FX, in regards to getting Firefox to open Microsoft Word documents via OpenOffice.
Yet another browser enters the market. The AT&T Pogo Browser, was in a limited private beta which you could sign up to try out. That was provided your machine could handle the requirements: 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. But even a machine running running dual-processor, dual-core AMD Opteron 2210 with 1.80GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 560 video card with 128MB of VRAM running Windows XP couldn’t handle the massive 3D interface for navigating through the browser’s history as well as bookmarks. It is a Mozilla based browser, with a lot of bling.
No release scheduled for the remainder of 2008
Ken Saunders has created Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla snow globes. All three designs come in either a static PNG or animated (Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5) PNG format; choose from 125×125 or 200×200; with or without Happy Holidays.
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More Firefox themed holiday decorations including wall papers and ornaments can be found at AccessFirefox.org. All graphics are available for PC, Mac or Linux.
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Source: Mozilla Links
Yes, you read that title correctly, this after the disclaimer “IMPORTANT: Firefox 2.0.0.x will no longer be maintained with security and stability updates. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.” on the Firefox 2.0.0.19 Released post.
From the Developer’s News Blog:
Firefox 2.0.0.20 includes an additional security fix over Firefox 2.0.0.19 for users of the Windows platform. The following security issue was fixed.
Mozilla has released the 20th and final security and usability update for the Firefox 2 browser. For more information about this update see the Firefox 2.0.0.20 Release Notes. Current Firefox 2 users may obtain Firefox 2.0.0.20 manually via the Check for Updates… option from the Help menu. Automatic upgrade (for those who have this feature enabled) should occur within the next 24-48 hours. Alternatively, users may also download Firefox 2.0.0.20 directly here.
NOTE: The Phishing Protection service isl no longer be available for Firefox 2 users.
Mozilla has released the fifth stability and security update for the current Firefox 3 browser. For more information about What’s New in Firefox 3.0.5, check out the Release Notes (as of this post were titled What’s New in Firefox 3.0.5 Beta).
Current Firefox 3 users may obtain Firefox 3.0.5 manually via the Check for Updates… option from the Help menu. Automatic upgrade (for those who have this feature enabled) should occur within the next 24-48 hours. Alternatively, users may also download Firefox 3.0.5 directly via getfirefox.com
