That’s right folks, you heard it here probably not first. But at any rate, the FINAL version of Firefox 3.0 will be released to the public on Tuesday June 17th.
That’s right folks, you heard it here probably not first. But at any rate, the FINAL version of Firefox 3.0 will be released to the public on Tuesday June 17th.
NOTE: See my updated post.
From Asa Dotzler’s Blog:
“Firefox, now with 18.41% of the global browser market according to Net Applications, was the fastest growing browser in May.
The May numbers from Net Applications have been released to the public. The three notable moves, I think, are that IE has fallen more than 1 full percentage point in the last month, Firefox has gained nearly a point, and Firefox 3 pre-releases are very close to passing Opera’s desktop browser to become the 4th most used browser in the world.
IE continuing to lose market share is no surprise, but the 1.08 point drop is pretty significant for a one month period before the release of Firefox 3.
The Firefox growth of 0.65 points is the biggest monthly jump for Firefox in the last 7 months.
The most exciting change, though, is the Firefox 3 pre-release growth. Firefox 3 pre-releases grew .23 points in May — and without even maintaining that growth rate, it will surpass Opera’s desktop browser before Firefox 3 ships.“
This is exciting. I think Firefox 3 is poised to take over a lot of market share when it’s released this month.
Courtesy of MozillaLinks:
“On today’s Firefox 3 status meeting, the need for a second release candidate was confirmed and it has been tentatively targeted for early June.
RC2 will fix about a couple of dozen bugs including some top crashers, some affecting performance and localization related. Most of the bugs already have patches waiting for review or landing and the revised code is expected for tomorrow, with initial builds available on Thursday. QA will start the same day and last for about a week.
If all goes as planned, RC 2 should be released close to June 6 for a new round of tests by Firefox users. Depending on whether a new critical bug is found or not, a third RC could be necessary or RC2 will become Firefox 3 final.“
I think that we can still see a final Firefox 3 released in June. I do very much agree that FF needs another round of tests with RC2 because I’ve had quite a few crashes with RC1 and I think those bugs need to be resolved before they release the final code. It would look bad for them if they hastily released the browser just to stay on schedule. Hooray for RC2!!
I found an article on the New York Times website describing the new Firefox 3 release and the state of the current browser wars.
“SAN FRANCISCO — The browser, that porthole onto the broad horizon of the Web, is about to get some fancy new window dressing. Next month, after three years of development and six months of public testing, Mozilla, the insurgent browser developer that rose from the ashes of Netscape, will release Firefox 3.0. It will feature a few tricks that could change the way people organize and find the sites they visit most frequently.”
Like Paul Thurrott said, it IS interesting to read what the mainstream press has to say about technology related matters. Most news organizations have no idea what is really going on with technology and they usually butcher tech news stories. At any rate, it was fun to read some of the interviews and see some interplay between Mozilla and Microsoft in the article.
My personal feelings are that Mozilla is much more powerful than people give it credit for. I think despite Microsoft saying they love a challenge, they’d better love it, because Mozilla is not going to stop at Firefox 3. Also, open-source and Linux are moving at an alarming rate of popularity and the potential benefits of these platforms could jeopardize Microsoft’s strangle hold on the web.
I’d love to see a day where Mozilla has 85% market share of the web browser market, I think that will be a day of reckoning for Microsoft. Although, at that point it’d be safe to say the company would be vanquished, at least in the browser division. Paul Thurrott thinks that Mozilla is more evolutionary than innovative and that’s fine. I think he might be right. But that doesn’t stop the force that is Mozilla. And Mozilla will continue to chip away at Internet Explorer until they either screw up badly or IE takes a turn for the worst. I can’t wait to watch the show.
Pidgin IM has released a new version 2.4.2 for Windows and Linux. You can download the open-source IM client from here:
“Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.”
In the SunSpider JavaScript Bechmark test, the newly released Firefox 3.0 RC1 was far and away the best performer. The new browser was pitted against a bunch of others including Opera, Safari, and IE 7 with various builds.
Here are the results of the test, courtesy of ZDNet.
Source: Asa Dotzler’s Blog
So, in Firefox you can configure and view various configurations by typing “about:something” in the address bar. That “something” can be the following:
about:config
about:plugins
about:crashes
about:robots
Please let me know what other abouts you can come up with in the comments section!
You can follow the Firefox 3 RC release schedule here.
Right now, Mozilla is saying that the first RC will be finished by the end of May. Unless the code is perfect, they will ship a few more release candidates and then the final release is set for June. I would say late June at this point.
“Thanks to the end-of-term for many colleges and some K12 schools, brute-force attacks against SSH servers surged sharply this past weekend, according to the SANS Internet Storm Center. The sudden jump in SSH attacks merits a re-examination of how such servers should be properly secured. Jim Owens and Jeanna Matthews of the Department of Computer Science at Clarkson University have published a paper on the methods that such attacks frequently employ and on the best ways to defeat them.”
“If you’ve got an SSH server that you want to secure from brute-force attack, Owens and Matthews recommend taking several steps. First, all passwords should be strong, usernames should be non-obvious, and SSH logins for the root account should be disabled. The two also recommend running the SSH server on a non-standard high port, though they recognize that this is a “security through obscurity” tactic, and they advocate the use of software capable of parsing log files and noting multiple failed login attempts. These steps, taken in aggregate, should be sufficient to protect an SSH server, even if the number of attacks continues to rise.”
