Five years of Firefox, 25% market share, and more…
In this issue…
- Celebrating five years of Firefox
- How to light the world with Firefox
- Firefox hits 25% market share
- Web developer survey!
- Jetpack for Learning design challenge
- Firefox Goes Mobile challenge winner
- Important API changes
- Advancing Web Typography presentation
- Test Pilot 0.3 and a new study
- Accessibility features in Firefox 3.6
- Firefox 3.5.5 update
- Weave 0.8 released
- Upcoming events
- Developer calendar
- About about:mozilla
Celebrating five years of Firefox
Five years ago yesterday, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 with the belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. Since then, Firefox has gained over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users in the world. We’ve come so far in the past five years, and we’re incredibly excited about the next five. For a more comprehensive look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed, check out the post on hacks.mozilla.org. Mitchell Baker has also posted about this event.
This is not a simple one day celebration — Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the globe in a special campaign called “Light the World with Firefox” — shining the Firefox logo from Tokyo to Rome, from Paris to San Francisco, and more. For full details on the parties in your area or to check out other ways to join in the celebration, head over to the Firefox Five Years website.
How to light the world with Firefox
Mary Colvig has written a great post in which she gives more information and inspiration for the Light the World with Firefox event, launched as a way for people around the globe to help Mozilla celebrate Firefox’s fifth birthday. Head over to Mary’s blog to get ideas for mobile, mash-ups, shadow play, stencils, and more.
Firefox hits 25% market share
Ken Kovash, head of Mozilla’s number-crunching metrics team, writes, “At the very same moment in time that Firefox celebrates its 5th birthday, Firefox has also surpassed 25% worldwide market share for the very first time. This news comes from Net Applications’ report for the week of November 1st.” Further details, including “before” and “after” pie charts, are available on Ken’s blog.
Web developer survey!
Two weeks ago the Mozilla Evangelism and Marketing teams announced the beginnings of the new Mozilla Developer Network (MDN). If you’re a Web developer, they need your help in understanding who you are, what you’re interested in, and what resources would be most valuable for you on MDN. To do this, they have created a short survey for which they’re hoping to get a total of 5000 responses. With 3600 responses so far, the teams have posted an initial set of results at the Mozilla Hacks weblog. Take the survey today!
Jetpack for Learning design challenge
The Mozilla Labs and Mozilla Foundation teams have joined together to host the Jetpack for Learning design challenge, which is already underway. “We invite you to help turn the open Web into a rich learning environment and explore new possibilities for using Firefox add-ons to support learning online. We’re looking for designers, educators and software developers who want to turn their innovative ideas into working prototypes. Participants creating the best prototypes will be invited to the Jetpack for Learning Design Camp and the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2010.” There’s still time to make submissions (deadline is Nov 27th), and all students and educators are encouraged to participate. “The Mozilla project is a great place to be a student, and this is just one more reason why.”
Firefox Goes Mobile challenge winner
The results from the Mozilla Creative Collective’s “Firefox Goes Mobile” design challenge are in, and we’re pleased to announce that the winner is “Pocketfox”, by Yaroslaff Chekunov. As the official emblem of the upcoming mobile version of Firefox, we’ll be using this image as an avatar on social networking sites, on mozilla.com, on t-shirts and more. Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.” Be sure to check out his other Mozilla work as well as his general portfolio. For further details about the results, including the four runners-up, see Caitlin Looney’s blog post.
Important API changes
The Mozilla Hacks team has written a post outlining some important API changes of interest to Web developers. These include removing the media element “load” event, and changing our CSS gradient syntax. For details, you can read the original posts at Robert O’Callahan’s weblog: media element, CSS gradient.
Advancing Web Typography presentation
John Daggett writes, “Last week Jonathan Kew and I went down to attend and present at ATypl 2009, a typography conference that took place in Mexico City. There was an entire day of sessions on web fonts. Jonathan and I presented a session on ‘Advancing Web Typography’.” You can read more and download the presentation slides at John’s weblog.
Test Pilot 0.3 and a new study
The Mozilla Labs team has announced a new version of Test Pilot and a new upcoming study. “For this study, which will be launching at the beginning of December, we would like to explore what a browser does to facilitate using the Web through a year. We will periodically collect usage information about the browser for a week and run the same study again every 60 days. The main goal is to explore if the browser has been used differently over time, which may help us design a better product that works adaptively.” For more information about this release, see the original announcement post. You can download Test Pilot from addons.mozilla.org.
Accessibility features in Firefox 3.6
Marco Zehe has posted a fantastic round up of the accessibility features that will be in Firefox 3.6. These include: support for voice dictation software in Windows, Windows 7 task bar integration, more consistent focus handling, support for the IAccessibleTable2 interface, more consistent and maintainable naming rules, notifying screen readers when an object attribute’s value changes, and “tons of bug fixes”. For details on all of these and links to more information, see Marco’s weblog.
Firefox 3.5.5 update
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.5 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download from Firefox.com. We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. For a list of changes and more information, please see the Firefox 3.5.5 Release Notes.
Weave 0.8 released
Mike Connor, part of the Mozilla Labs Weave team, has announced the release of Weave 0.8. “We’ve been hard at work over the last month on the next milestone on our path to 1.0, and we’ve just released version 0.8. In this last pre-beta release we have made a number of changes based on feedback from users around tighter integration with Firefox and Fennec, and improvements to the incremental sync behaviour introduced in 0.7. For more details about Weave 0.8, please check out the details over at the Weave blog.”
Upcoming events
The Mozilla community is organizing an increasing number of events and meetups all the time, and we include a list of these here every week. If you have events you would like listed, send them along to: about-mozilla*at*mozilla.com.
* Nov 13 – Online – Testday: Fennec
* Nov 20 – Online – Testday: Firefox 3.6
* Dec 4 – Online – Testday: Weave
Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page. Notes from previous meetings are linked to through the Calendar as well.
About about:mozilla
about:mozilla is by, for and about the Mozilla community, focusing on major news items related to all aspects of the Mozilla Project. The newsletter is written by Deb Richardson and is published every Tuesday morning. If you have any news or announcements you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.
If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.
10 Nov 2009 deb comments off
