We are excited to release the latest Firefox 4 Beta. This beta offers easier account and new device setup for Firefox Sync, expanded support for 3D graphics in the browser and a revamped Firefox Add-ons Manager.

Streamlined Firefox Sync Setup
Firefox 4 Beta now includes a streamlined Firefox Sync setup, making it easier to bring Awesome bar history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords across your computers and smartphones. Based on your feedback, we’ve made it much easier to setup Firefox Sync while still securing your Firefox data with the same high-grade encryption. Ragavan Srinivasan, Project Manager for Firefox Sync, describes the new setup procedure for desktops, laptops, Android or Nokia Maemo phones and iPhones in more detail (and with videos!) in this blog post.

Increased Support for 3D Graphics
WebGL is an open standard for accelerated 3D graphic rendering on the Web that enables developers to build applications that until now required a user to install plug-ins. Firefox 4 Beta now supports WebGL for most modern built-in graphics cards, making it easier for developers to create interactive 3D games, vivid graphics and new visual experiences for the Web without the use of third-party plug-ins. For more information on WebGL, read this post from Principal Firefox Engineer Vlad Vukicevic.

Combined with our previous work to bring open HTML5 technologies for animation, video, and sound to the Web, developers can now create amazing experiences that are rendered directly in the browser, combining themselves with live data from the Internet. Watch the video of the “Flight of the Navigator” below, or better yet, try it on your computer (it requires a modern computer with recent graphics hardware). The live demo is rendered in your browser as you watch. As Professor and Mozilla Developer Dave Humphrey describes, this is not a video – it’s built using open technologies, pulls in data from Twitter and Flickr, and puts it all together as you watch.

Automatic Updates with new Firefox Add-ons Manager
The revamped Firefox Add-ons Manager is now available on Windows, Mac and Linux with an easy way to manage and discover add-ons to enhance and personalize your browsing experience. Now, add-ons update automatically with the Firefox Add-Ons Manager enables add-ons to update automatically so your add-ons are always up to date. For more information on the Firefox Add-ons Manager, see this blog post from Jennifer Boriss on the Firefox User Experience team.

Making Firefox Add-ons Compatible
We are working with the amazing community of add-ons developers to get the gallery of thousands of beneficial and fun add-ons ready to customize the features, look and functionality of Firefox 4 Beta. For more details on how to make your add-on compatible for Firefox 4, read this blog post from Firefox Add-ons Developer Relations Lead Jorge Villalobos.

Thank you to all our beta testers for all the help building and testing Firefox 4 Beta. Please keep the feedback coming. We love to hear from you and we couldn’t build Firefox 4 Beta without you.

For more information:

• Download Firefox 4 Beta
• Learn more about the features
• Submit your feedback
• Short, to the point FAQ
• Long, technical release notes

We are excited to release the newest Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo. The beta is now available in the Android Market, which you can find by opening the Market application on your phone and searching for “Mozilla Firefox.”   The Maemo builds are available for download here . This beta release is not feature or performance complete, but with the help and feedback from our community of testers we’re building an amazing browser. (Note: To ensure smooth updates, we ask existing beta users on Android to please uninstall previous Firefox betas before installing this release.)

With Firefox on mobile devices, we aim to offer an effortless and optimized experience, while also solving the pain points of mobile browsing. Based on feedback from beta testers, we made a number of changes to the look of Firefox 4 Beta, made discovery of add-ons easier, added the ability to save websites as PDFs to read later, fixed some keyboard issues and included support for complex scripts such as Arabic and Persian (on devices with the appropriate fonts). You can find more details on the user experience updates from Lead UX Designer, Madhava Enros.

We design Firefox on mobile devices to minimize typing because typing on phones is difficult and time consuming. Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo now has support for “copy and paste” in the URL bar. We also simplified the setup process for Firefox Sync to reduce the amount of typing needed to securely access your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords from your desktop to your phone, making it easy to get to (and even log in to) any site with minimal typing.

We continue to focus on performance, responsiveness and usability in future releases and have a lot more to come for graphics, JavaScript, add-ons and more.

Feedback from our beta testers is extremely useful in fixing bugs and making improvements to Firefox 4 Beta. We keep a close eye on the feedback people submit and watch the crash report data closely to ensure that we continue to improve stability over the previous betas.

Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.

For more information, please visit:

• Release notes
• FAQ
• Support

Editor’s Note: Today, Mozilla Labs posted an update on the Open Web App Ecosystem project. Included below is an excerpt from this post. You can read the full details from Director of Mozilla Labs, Pascal Finette here.

The Web needs support for the co-existence of multiple Open Web App stores, and to enable users to use applications from these stores in a consistent manner. People buy their shoes, food and music from different stores on the Web today, and we see the same need for diversity and choice with Open Web Apps. We are excited to build a truly free and open market which is the basis for innovation and fundamental to the Web.

We recently launched a project to build the infrastructure for an Open Web App Ecosystem because we want to enable many different stores to exist and work in any modern browser across devices and platforms. The Open Web App Ecosystem will allow app developers to publish apps on their own website under their own terms, and will provide opportunities for individuals and companies to develop innovative services.

On June 14, 2010, two female firefox (a.k.a red panda) cubs were born at the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee, and as of today, they’ve officially joined the Mozilla community. To meet our newest (and cutest) Mozillians, visit www.firefoxlive.org. For the next few months you’ll be able to watch these baby firefoxes play, live and grow via a 24 hour live video stream.

Red Pandas are endangered animals, and these particular cubs are the most vital captive firefoxes to the bloodline of their species. Just as Mozilla works to build and protect the open Web, we also support the preservation of key natural ecosystems and hope that Firefox Live will raise awareness of the pandas’ threatened status. (Learn about Mozilla’s other conservation efforts here.)

You can also help us name the cubs! Right now they go by the rather utilitarian names “cub #1″ and “cub #2″, but you can add your suggestions for what they should be called on the site. And, that’s just the beginning – over the next few months we’ll be providing more ways for you to interact with them, support firefoxes in the wild and increase awareness of Mozilla’s mission.

Although the cubs are fun to watch pretty much any time, they’re especially active and entertaining after they’ve been fed – usually around 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. EST. Also, there are six different camera angles to choose from, so if they dart out of view you have several other options for following the action. Enjoy!

Editor’s Note: Today, Mozilla released our annual report and 2009 financial statements. You can find full details on the annual report website. Included below is an excerpt from Mitchell Baker’s blog:

Mozilla has just filed its audited financial statements for 2009. This is the perfect time to look at the state of the Mozilla mission, our successes, our opportunities and our challenges. This year we’re trying a different format to better reflect the scope of Mozilla and to make better use of video and visual information. We’re hosting this year’s State of Mozilla at our main website rather than at this blog. Please take a look!

A new release of Firefox 4 Beta is now ready for you to download and test! This release boosts performance in some important ways: it adds the JägerMonkey just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler; adds more support for hardware-accelerated graphics, as well as hardware acceleration for Windows XP and Mac OS X; and enables 3D capabilities, without the need for plug-ins, with WebGL.

This means pages load faster, interactions with websites are snappier and the Web is just a lot more fun. For developers, this means you can build richer high-performance Web applications and explore the world of 3D graphics, inherent to the Web.

Also, the Add-ons APIs for Firefox 4 are now stable, so if you are an add-on developer, now is the time to update your Firefox 3.6-compatible Add-ons to support Firefox 4.

What’s New:

Boosting JavaScript Performance with JägerMonkey
JägerMonkey is an invisible but powerful addition to Firefox 4 Beta. The Firefox SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine now incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, which, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter, add up to speeds that really show off today’s rich Web apps. You’ll notice this in faster start-up time, improved page-load speed and the performance of Web apps and games.

Firefox 4 Beta is really fast. Here’s how the latest beta compares with Firefox 3.6 and previous versions of Firefox 4 Beta on various JavaScript benchmark test suites:

For more details, see Firefox Engineer David Mandelin’s blog post.

Boosting Graphics Performance
This update to Firefox 4 Beta incorporates hardware-accelerated graphics into the final rendering of a website — referred to as “compositing.” This enables websites to load and respond faster to rich and interactive content like Web games, apps or photos. On Windows (including Windows XP), hardware acceleration is done using DirectX technology; on Mac OS X, it’s done using OpenGL.

Not all graphics cards and/or video drivers support hardware acceleration. Read these blog posts from Firefox Developer Joe Drew for more details on the latest improvements in hardware acceleration and to check if your hardware supports this functionality.

Bringing 3D graphics to Firefox with WebGL
Firefox 4 Beta enables developers to render 3D graphics using WebGL. Web developers can now create spectacular games, vivid graphics and brand-new visual experiences for the Web, without requiring users to install plug-ins! This means that 3D graphics can be mashed-up with other Web technologies to provide amazing experiences that seamlessly integrate with the rest of your website. WebGL in Firefox 4 Beta requires an OpenGL-capable graphics card on Windows or Mac OS X. Additional support for other graphics cards on Windows (specifically Intel GPUs) and Linux will come in future beta releases.

Support for Exquisite Fonts with OpenType
Get ready for websites with layouts as elegant as you would find in a typeset book. With support for OpenType font features in Firefox 4 Beta, designers and developers can create sophisticated effects by controlling ligatures, kerning, alternative glyphs, small caps and more. To learn more, read this blog post from Firefox Platform Engineer John Daggett.

Improved HTML5 Forms
Firefox 4 Beta also improves HTML forms. Detailed HTML5 forms are a snap to create with auto-complete, HTML5 form validation and the new Form API. For more information, see this blog post from Firefox Developer Mounir Lamouri.

Features and Performance
Firefox 4 is shaping up to be the fast and fun browser to experience the Web the way you want it. This release is a great step and combines a lot of features that make your travels around the Web fun, smooth and personal (Firefox Sync, Panorama, App Tabs and the new Add-ons Manager, just to name a few) with excellent performance. It’s really great.

Thank you!
Thanks to everyone who has tested the beta so far. Please keep your feedback coming. By participating in our Test Pilot studies (more than a million of you already have!) and using the Firefox 4 Beta Feedback Button (hundreds of thousands of responses so far!), you’re helping us make Firefox better all the time. Tell your friends. Together, we all make Firefox great.

If you’re already testing Firefox 4 Beta, you will be automatically updated to the latest version. There will be additional betas as we approach the final release, so stay tuned for the next release in the coming weeks.

For more information:
·      Download Firefox 4 Beta
·      Learn more about the features
·      Submit your feedback
·      Short, to the point FAQ
·      Long, technical release notes

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

The Mozilla community is excited to celebrate the 6th birthday of Firefox, the Web browser of choice for nearly 400 million people worldwide.

Image Credit: Gen Kanai

Mozilla was established more than 10 years ago as a non-profit organization with a mission to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web. Six years ago, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 offering people a better Web experience.

Today, Firefox is available in more than 70 languages and offers an easy way for people to enjoy rich Web experiences. Nearly a quarter of Internet users choose Firefox as their trusted ambassador to the Web. More than 150 million people choose Firefox Add-ons to customize their Web experience.

The success of Firefox is due to the passionate and dedicated Mozilla community, comprised of tens of thousands of developers, localizers, testers, ambassadors and campus reps.

This year, to celebrate Firefox and the Mozilla community’s work promoting innovation, choice and openness on the Web, we ask for your help to showcase how people love and use Firefox in your part of the world. Just send us a postcard with your message about Firefox and your FoxCard will be featured in our Mountain View or Paris offices. You can even win Firefox goodies when you send in your FoxCard. Check out our FoxCards page on Facebook or Spread Firefox for more information.

If you want to know what’s next for Firefox, help us test Firefox 4 Beta and send us your feedback.

We are happy to bring you the latest release of Firefox 4 Beta for mobile. The beta is now available for download in 10 languages on your Android or Maemo device.

We received a lot of great feedback on the previous beta and addressed many of the issues reported, including reduced memory usage, improved text rendering and a 60% install size reduction on Android (from around 43 MB to 17 MB). There is still room for improvement and we’ll continue to make the install size smaller. (Note: Due to some technical limitations on Android, upgrading won’t remove some of the old files that are no longer needed. Therefore, you must uninstall the previous beta before you will see the size improvements.)

A few new things you’ll see in this release include a new theme that gives Firefox a fresh new look, the ability to easily share links with your friends from the Site Menu and the ability to undo closing a tab. Learn more about the Firefox UI improvements from Madhava Enros, our Lead UX Designer.

In this release we also worked to make Firefox 4 Beta faster. Actions like panning and zooming are faster and smoother, and page load times are reduced from our previous beta. On Android 2.2, we’re now around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser.

We are working to minimize changes that affect add-on functionality. We would love to see our awesome community of add-on developers building exciting new add-ons, especially ones that consider mobile specific use cases.

We will continue to improve usability and performance in the next release. We’ll add hardware acceleration to make scrolling and zooming even faster and will enable HTML5 video to bring a more rich browsing experience to your phone. We are also working to improve browser responsiveness while Firefox Sync completes the initial sync of your data.

In this beta, there is a new “Feedback” button in the Browser Controls panel to make it easy for you to let us know what you like or dislike. While the overall stability of Firefox improved in this release, we also added easy-to-submit crash reporting, similar to how it works in desktop Firefox.

We need your help testing this beta to build the best Firefox mobile browser. Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.

For more information, please visit:

• Release notes
• FAQ
• Support

Editor’s Note: Today, the GNOME Foundation announced an additional $10,000 grant from Mozilla to support their important accessibility work. See the GNOME Foundation press release for full details. Included below is an excerpt from the release:

Mozilla is helping to fund improvements in the Orca screen reader. The Mozilla Project has helped to identify performance problems when Orca interacts with Gecko-based applications and other desktop applications. The funds will be used to perform a review of Orca performance bottlenecks and help fix problems that are identified. Orca is an extremely important tool for users of GNOME with reduced vision.

“The web is an integral part of everyday life and it’s important for it to be accessible to everyone.” says David Bolter of Mozilla. “I am thrilled we are again contributing funds to the GNOME Foundation for critical efforts, including Orca, and events like the accessibility hackfest at CSUN.”

The open Web is a great platform for rich applications. It would be even better if it had additional capabilities to ease discovery, acquisition, installation and use of apps, while also enabling monetization for developers. We designed and built a prototype of a system for open Web apps: Apps built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript that work both on computers and mobile phones, have many of the characteristics that users find compelling about native apps and provide developers with open and flexible distribution options.

Today, we are releasing technical documentation of the proposed system and a developer preview prototype that allows you to install, manage and launch Web apps in any modern desktop or mobile browser (Firefox 3.6 and later, Firefox for mobile, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 6, Safari 5, Opera 10 and WebKit mobile). This prototype provides a simple mechanism to support paid apps and authentication features to allow apps to log users in upon launch.

The design proposed here provides the following capabilities and enables a new category of what we call “Open Web Apps” — apps that are truly of the Web.

Open Web Apps:

• Are built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Can be “installed” to a dashboard within your mobile or desktop Web browser, or to your native OS desktop or mobile home screen.
• Work in all modern Web browsers, while enabling each browser to compete on app presentation, organization and management user interfaces.
• Support paid apps by means of an authorization model that uses existing identity systems like OpenID.
• Support portable purchases: An app purchased for one browser works in other browsers, and across multiple desktop and mobile platforms without repurchase.
• Can request access to one or more advanced and/or privacy-sensitive capabilities that they would like access to (like geolocation) which the system will mediate, giving the user the ability to opt-in to them if desired.
• Can be distributed by developers directly to users without any gatekeeper, and distributed through multiple stores, allowing stores to compete on customer service, price, policies, app discoverability, ratings, reviews and other attributes.
• Can receive notifications from the cloud.
• Support deep search across apps: Apps can implement an interface that enables the app container (generally the Web browser) to provide the user with a cross-app search experience that links deeply into any app that can satisfy the search.

Check out this demo to see more about our Open Web App prototype:

Please join us in exploring this Open Web App concept. Head over to the Mozilla Labs forum, leave a comment here and follow the Mozilla Labs blog for updates. As with everything Mozilla does, we’re developing this prototype and design for the public benefit in the open and we look forward to making this concept a reality.

Open Web App Ecosystem FAQ