Note: Effective today the Mozilla Project Weekly Status Meetings will be held 2-hours earlier at 11:00 AM PDT.

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• AMO 5.0.7 freeze was 7/2
• 5.0.7 pushed to next Wednesday (7/15) (help us test!)
• Upcoming projects welcoming discussion
  • Collections Phase II
  • Removing the sandbox
  • developer.AMO designs
• 365 pending updates and 268 nominated add-ons (graph)
• 90% of hosted add-ons compatible with 3.5.*

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.12
  • handed off to build a couple hours ago
  • still targeting mid-late July for release

• Firefox 3.0.13
  • proposed schedule to become final this week
  • will have a final list of blockers this week as well

• Firefox 3.5
  • we shipped a browser last week – perhaps you noticed?
  • 15M downloads and counting
  • Windows CE builds are becoming a higher priority

• Firefox 3.5.1
  • starting to build out a schedule this week
  • stay tuned, come to tomorrow’s development meeting

• Firefox 3.6 (Namoroka)
  • Explorations and sprints to determine what will become the cornerstones of 3.next/Namoroka

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.1
  • No Report

THUNDERBIRD

• Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 / Gecko 1.8.1.23
  • No Report

• TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder)
  • 3.0b3 schedule updated

Complete Meeting Notes

For assistance with importing passwords to/from other versions of Firefox see: Tip: Importing Saved Passwords

During the development of Firefox 3.1/3.5 the way Firefox handles passwords was changed. Passwords are now stored in a file called signsons.sqlite. Should you choose to do a fresh install of Firefox 3.5 instead of upgrading directly from 3.0.11 or moving away from the old Firefox 2, follow these steps below to get your passwords into Firefox 3.5:

From Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.5 (upgrade):

1. Close Firefox 2
2. In the Firefox 2  profile folder locate and copy the files: signons2.txt and key3.db
3. In the Firefox 3.5 profile folder delete the files (note: not all files may be in the folder)

   • signons2.txt
   • signons3.txt
   • keys3.db
   • signons.sqlite
     

4. Replace (paste) with the files from step 2.
5. Start Firefox 3.5  Note: Firefox 3.5 will automatically generate a new signons.sqlite file

From Firefox 3 to Firefox 3.5 (upgrade):

1. Close Firefox 3
2. In the Firefox 3  profile folder locate and copy the files: signons3.txt and key3.db
3. In the Firefox 3.5 profile folder delete the files (note: not all files may be in the folder)

   • signons2.txt
   • signons3.txt
   • keys3.db
   • signons.sqlite
     

4. Replace (paste) with the files from step 2.
5. Start Firefox 3.5  Note: Firefox 3.5 will automatically generate a new signons.sqlite file

The Cookies controls are a bit hidden in Firefox 3.5. You will need to go Tools >> Options.. >> Privacy.  From there under history select from Firefox will: Use custom settings for history.

Your screen will change and be similar to below. Click the Show Cookies… button to manage your cookies.

“Within the web today, a browsing transformation is underway.  We’re seeing constant advancement from the static browsing Middle Ages of old and the ushering in of a new Modern Era of openness, speed and security.“

–Sean Martell

Mozilla’s Sean Martell has created a Da Vinci-esque A Web Browser Renaissance wallpaper. You can get either a 4:3 ratio widescreen version (2560px × 1600px) or fullscreen version (1600px × 1200px). The same design is also available as a Persona skin.

Source: Mozilla Links

With Firefox 3.5 Released yesterday, many unsuspecting users are going to unwillingly discover the new tab tearing ‘feature’ in Firefox 3.5. This ‘feature’ allows you to tear a tab from the current window to have it opened in its own window. The problem with this is simply clicking on the tab and dragging it downward tears it from the current browser window and places it in another new window.

Personally, I have never seen (or had) a practical use for this ‘feature’ and have found it to be more of an annoyance since it was introduced back in the 3.1 developmental builds. I have always wondered if I was the only one who disliked this ‘feature’, apparently I am not. Back in June 2009, WhiteAlice0775 created an add-on named bug489729 (this is one of the bug #’s which people complained about this ‘feature’) which gives you the ability to turn off the tab tearing ‘feature’.

Note: This add-on is presently marked as experimental. You do NOT need an AMO login to install this add-on. Simply check the box beside ‘Let me install this experimental add-on’ and you will be able to install this add-on as you would normally. After you have installed and restarted Firefox, go to your add-ons manager and click Options on bug489729, place a check in the boxes and click OK. Setting take effect immediately.

bug489729 is for Firefox 3.5 only and is about 5 KB

Source: Mozilla Links

After nearly a year in development (and six months later than planned) Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5 today!  Many new exciting features for users and web developers:

• We have included tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode, and the ability to go back in time and Clear Recent History.
• Firefox 3.5 has support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.
• The browser features faster performance on complex websites thanks to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• Users can enjoy Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Web developers can make use of native JSON parsing, and web worker threads.
• This release includes improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Firefox 3.5 supports new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

Links of Interest:

• Mozilla releases Firefox 3.5 (Microsoft Blog)
• Firefox 3.5: The Technologizer Review
• Video: What’s New In Firefox 3.5?
• All about Firefox 3.5 (Mozilla Links)

Source: Mozilla Developers News

Just Released

• Firefox 3.5RC3 – June 24, 2009

Schedule this Coming Week

• FIREFOX 3.5 – JUNE 30th

Future Release

• Firefox 3.0.12 - July 21st

We mentioned earlier today about Firefox 3.5 RC3 Coming, it is now available for download. Whilst this may be as close to a final product, it is still a developmental version, therefore the usual disclaimer still applies:

Please note: Firefox 3.5 RC3 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this release.

Source: Mozilla Developers News

A very minor third and final RC is coming for Firefox 3.5 very soon. This RC includes retouches to the Firefox icon, localization corrections and a few performance tweaks. Due to the minor scope of this RC this should not have any effect on the final Firefox 3.5 release next week.

Source: MozillaLinks

As of Monday’s Mozilla Project Weekly meeting, they are on target to ship Firefox 3.5 by the end of this month. Wednesday is the “point of no return” where they will decide if Firefox 3.5 is ready for the month end release or not. Stay tuned…

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• 13k Collections made since launch
• 81% Compatibility
• Extend Firefox Contest
• Nick Nguyen speaking this week FISL in Brazil

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.12
  • Missed blockers for code freeze a week ago
  • Still trying to get in a couple more
  • Pushing out release by one week due to blockers missing code freeze
• Firefox 3.5
  • first version of the RC went to 800,000 beta testers on Monday
  • second version of the RC went live on Friday afternoon PDT
  • will make ship/no-ship evaluation on Wednesday of this week
  • still on target for last week of June
• Firefox 3.6 (Namoroka)
  • moving on to TSnap bugs which aim to make Firefox observably faster
  • also returning to polish bugs and exploratory sprints
  • reminder to review and add your comments/feedback on the discussion page or in the dev-apps-firefox thread

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.1
  • Dan Witte now full time! He’s initially working with Taras on static analysis.
  • Check out Chris Jones’ post on a very raw demo of our ongoing multi-process browser work. This work completes Phase I, and we’re really excited to see such great progress so quickly.
  • Last week, Andreas Gal, David Anderson, and David Mandelin were in Dublin for PLDI to present their paper Trace-based Just-in-Time Type Specialization for Dynamic Languages, which describes some of the guts of TraceMonkey, the new Javascript engine and a key feature of Firefox 3.5.
  • Oh, and no new blockers holding the release. So far.

THUNDERBIRD

• Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 / Gecko 1.8.1.22
  • Shipping today!

• TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder)
  • GloDa search work in bug 474701 ongoing; final big chunk should land soon, defaulted off. Plan is still to reset 3.0b3 dates after it’s been defaulted on for a few days.
  • Compact message header removed from core in order to make room for better/more polished remaining message header.

Complete Meeting Notes<!–

Firefox Product Director, Mike Beltzner gives a tour of some of the new and exciting features of the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release.

Source: MozillaLinks

Just Released

• Firefox 3.5RC1* – June 16, 2009
• Firefox 3.5RC2 – June 19, 2009

Schedule this Coming Week

• NONE

Future Release

• Firefox 3.0.12 - July 15th
• Firefox 3.5RC1 – June 2009

*Firefox 3.5RC1 was released through the ‘Beta’ update channel only.

With yesterday’s announcement on the Firefox 3.5 RC2 release, I was thinking I must have missed the announcement for RC1. As I was getting ready to publish this week’s release recaps I noticed the Mozilla ‘Release Page’ showed RC1 as released on June 16th. Odd I don’t recall seeing an announcement from Mozilla Dev News. So I checked back over there and discovered there was indeed an announcement, but this was not a ‘public’ release.

Our 800,000+ Firefox 3.5 beta users will be receiving an update to the first Firefox 3.5 release candidate (3.5rc1build2) in order to continue to help us with daily testing and public feedback. This update contains bug fixes which will be included in the final release of Firefox 3.5, expected later this month. While Mozilla has not yet completed the quality assurance testing required before an official product release, this update is considered stable for daily browsing use and we appreciate your assistance in helping us test and evaluate this version of the release candidate.