Mozilla introduces new Weave online service
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Mozilla is trying to weave a new web. Not sure if it matters yet.
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Editor&#39;s Summary: The Mozilla Foundation has followed up on the recent success of its Firefox browser with a new open source e-mail client.
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Mozilla has been quietly offering live Web support for the Firefox Web browser since the beginning of the year. It is one of the open-source group's experiments in improving the user experience and woo more of them from Microsoft Corp.'s still-dominant Internet Explorer.True to its open-source heritage, Firefox Live Chat is a valiant, all-volunteer effort. But the service remains in beta, buggy, http://blog.mozilla.com/sumo/2008/02/11/minutes-of-weekly-meeting-211/ and only available to users several hours a day during U.S. working hours."The hours of operation are currently very conservative," acknowledged David Tenser, who runs Mozilla's support programs, in an e-mail.Rivaling Linux itself as most popular open-source project, Firefox has never had trouble attracting volunteers. More than 1,000 people freely contribute code, 20,000 test pre-beta versions of Firefox every night and another 500,000 test the actual betas.But for the unglamorous job of chat-based technical support, Tenser has only been able to recruit about 20 volunteers. And during the actual 3-4 hour sessions, only about 3-5 of them are actually available answering users' questions."What we really need is more exposure so people can both discover how powerful this service is to users, as well as how fun it is to participate," wrote Tenser.Officially introduced in late 2004, Firefox has been downloaded more than 400 million times. New Mozilla CEO John Lilly claims there are 150 million active users, including 50 million people that use Firefox every day.Firefox is used by almost a third of European Net surfers, though global surveys show Firefox used by about one-sixth of Internet users, with IE still holding three-fourths of the market.Still, Mozilla would like to improve its retention rate, which it estimated several months ago to be less than 30 percent.Mozilla already offers several other forms of user support. Those include forums and newsgroups where users can post questions, knowledge base (KB) articles they can read at their leisure, and even an Internet Relay Channel (IRC) channel aimed at developers and more advanced users needing live support.As of early February, Live Chat volunteers had answered more than 4,100 chat requests, or about 100 a day, Tenser said. Most questions have been from users who had been unable to connect to the Web, usually due to firewall issues, Tenser said, or users having problems related to Firefox extensions.This reporter tried out Live Chat. The first time, no volunteers were available during the scheduled time. The second time, a tech support volunteer offered a fairly general fix to one problem (remove extensions one at a time to see which one was causing AJAX-heavy sites to render improperly), while suggesting I wait for Firefox 3 to fix another (occasionally missing passwords).Mozilla released its third beta for Firefox 3 in early February. The Mountain View, Calif. group is expected to release a final version of Firefox 3 sometime in 2008.Testers say that beta versions of Firefox 3 are faster and use less memory, have user interface improvements, and better security.Microsoft offers similar free and paid support offerings for Internet Explorer users through its support.microsoft.com Web site.IE users who have a retail copy of Windows XP or Vista are eligible for either 2 phone calls or live chats (XP), or 90 days worth of unlimited phone and chat support (Vista), according to a spokesman. After that, tech support calls or chat sessions cost $59 per incident.Mozilla has no plans to charge for Live Chat. Nor does it plan to make it part of a formal support program, something that some large companies have said they would need before they could consider switching from IE to Firefox.Tenser said volunteers do get questions from IT pros."They tend to ask about how to make changes to more than one machine without having to go in and make the changes via the user interface, or about locking down the preferences so users can't make changes," he wrote.
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Researchers are publishing security vulnerabilities this week that could offer attackers new ways to get into the enterprise. Mozilla updated its Firefox Web browser on Tuesday to thwart attacks that target a flaw in Apple&#39;s QuickTime player. Meanwhile, security researchers detailed new vulnerabilities in Windows and Windows Media player.
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Mozilla's open-source browser update is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features.
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Three days ahead of schedule, Mozilla Corp. has released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 3.0 Web browser.
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Places Organizer is one of the most-awaited new features in the upcoming Firefox 3.0.
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The latest beta release of the next Mozilla Firefox browser is unleashed. Read our review. Plus: Having trouble finding a Firefox 2 download? We've got links. In Monkey Bites.
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Prism, a new Windows-only beta release from Mozilla Labs, lets users run web applications in separate, stripped-down browser windows, making them look and act more like desktop applications. Compiler has a first look.
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Mozilla has released a critical security update to Firefox, taking a third shot at patching bugs in the way the browser can be used to launch programs from Web links.The bug, rated &quot;moderate&quot; by Mozilla, lies in the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) protocol handling technology that is used to launch programs -- an e-mail client for example -- from within the browser. Over the past few months, security researchers have been discovering an increasing number of ways that this technology can be misused, often as a way to install unauthorized software on a victim&#39;s computer.The URI patch is one of eight security bug-fixes that Mozilla has pushed out with the 2.0.0.8 update, released late Thursday.Mozilla developers originally thought that the issue lay within Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer software, which could be invoked in a malicious fashion via Firefox. Several days after issuing their first patch, however, they realized that there was a problem with Firefox as well, and rushed out the 2.0.0.6 update.Now, three months after that fix, they&#39;ve patched another URI bug in Firefox that will cut down on the likelihood of programs being launched maliciously through the browser. The 2.0.0.6 release &quot;did not prevent the incorrect file-handling programs from launching which left some risk,&quot; Mozilla said in its advisory . &quot;An additional fix has been applied to Firefox 2.0.0.8 that detects when Windows would mishandle these URIs so that the wrong program does not get launched.&quot;Mozilla developers weren&#39;t certain that this latest twist on the URI problem could really be exploited in Firefox, but they decided to issue this latest URI patch rather than wait to find out for certain, said Window Snyder, Mozilla&#39;s security chief. &quot;We could just say this particular vector is not an issue because we do not have proof,&quot; she said. &quot;We could leave it alone. Rather than spend our time analyzing whether this is a vector that could be vulnerable, we would rather put the block in place and eliminate the possibility. This is a defense-in-depth measure.&quot;Microsoft has said that it plans to patch underlying components in the Windows operating system in an effort to prevent URI protocol handler attacks, and that will probably go a long way in preventing new attacks from cropping up, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations, with nCircle Network Security. &quot;We have to applaud the Mozilla team for attempting to protect their users, but in the end, it&#39;s going to be a Microsoft responsibility,&quot; he said.Of the eight vulnerabilities patched Thursday, two are rated critical by Mozilla.The 2.0.0.8 release also adds support for Apple&#39;s Mac OS X 10.5 operating system, code-named Leopard, although Mozilla warns &quot;there are some known issues affecting some media plugins,&quot; on this platform.
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In a link from Dynamically Typed today, there's a new presentation about Creating Rich Applications with Mozilla, XUL, and AMP Technology (Mozilla-based browser needed to view).
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Users of Firefox yesterday began receiving notices of the availability of version 2.0.0.7, which the Mozilla organization said addresses a vulnerability involving Apple's QuickTime plug-in. In BetaNews tests of the new version this afternoon, the vulnerability in question appears to have been fully patched.
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InfoWorld - Mozilla has released a critical security update to Firefox, taking a third shot at patching bugs in the way the browser can be used to launch programs from Web links.
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The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.
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If you find yourself spending more time sorting your e-mail than reading it, consider the Mozilla Foundation&#39;s new Thunderbird e-mail client.
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Hoping to emulate the success of the open source browser Firefox, the Mozilla group has now released version 1.0 of its Thunderbird email client.
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Few people get excited when some new software is released, especially when the program is not a game or a music or movie player. But the release of the first full version of a web browser called Firefox has