Editor’s note: On April 20, Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 3.6.4 beta, which includes the “Lorentz” project to offer uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when a problem causes a crash in any Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugin instance. Firefox 3.6.4 beta is the newest release of Firefox 3.6, which has been downloaded more than 400 million times.

For more details, check out Mike Beltzner’s Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below.

Firefox 3.6.4 beta available for download and testing

A beta of Firefox 3.6.4 is now available for download and public testing. This version of Firefox will offer uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If a crash in one of these plugins happens, Firefox will continue to run and users will be able to submit a crash report before reloading the page to try again:

We encourage users to test this Firefox 3.6.4 beta on their favorite websites, and give us feedback by submitting their crash reports. If users find websites that repeatedly cause plugin crashes, we ask that they file a bug or fill out this feedback form. As always, we appreciate the help we get from the community in evaluating these beta releases.

Users who had installed the Firefox “Lorentz” beta release will be automatically updated to this beta release of Firefox 3.6.4, or can manually “Check for Updates” in the Help menu.

Today, the Mozilla metrics team released the first ever State of the Internet report. With more than 350 million people around the world using the Firefox Web browser, we are careful to ensure the data we collect is fairly limited and feel compelled to share what we’re able to extract from that data.

Some interesting findings from this report:

• Looking across several sources of market share data, Firefox’s worldwide share appears close to 30%.
• Usage/Adoption of Firefox this quarter grew most dramatically in Russia.
• Where do people get the earliest start to their day?  Hawaii, Wyoming, and Maine.  And the latest start?  New York.
• People in South America and Antarctica are passionate about personalizing their browser.
• In one usage study, we found one person having more than 600 tabs open at one time.  (This last insight comes from Test Pilot, Mozilla Labs’ platform for opt-in participation in studies and experiments.)

See the full report from Ken Kovash on the Mozilla Metrics Blog.

Last week, the Mozilla Developer Network launched the second quarterly survey to obtain developer feedback. Also on hacks.mozilla.org are results from the first quarterly developer survey conducted in November. Thanks to the feedback from more than 5,000 developers last quarter, the Mozilla Developer Network was able to put in place a solid plan moving forward.

We would appreciate your feedback and help to get the word out about our new quarterly developer survey.

See Alix Franquet’s post on hacks.mozilla.org- results from last quarter’s survey as well as more details about Mozilla developer efforts.

Editor’s note: On March 13, Mozilla Labs announced the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge winners at the the Mozilla SXSW Happy Hour. For more details, check out Aza Raskin’s announcement on the Mozilla Labs blog, reposted below:

Three projects of the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge were awarded special prizes at the Mozilla SXSW party today. Ten projects already selected as Design Challenge winners participated in a design camp in Austin, TX over the past three days. Today three of these projects were chosen for special awards: ClozeFox was selected as “best use case”; the project leader of Mupple received the prize for “sharing knowledge with others”; Expression Widgets was chosen as the “best web hack”. You can find more information about them and download all Jetpacks-based add-ons from the Design Challenge wiki.

The Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge supported projects that turn the open web into a rich social learning environment. Developed by Mozilla Labs, a design challenge is an innovative combination of online seminar series, programming competition and hands-on workshop. The Jetpack SDK enables anyone who knows the tools of the web—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—to build powerful Firefox add-ons. Jetpack for Learning is a part of Mozilla’s new Drumbeat initiative and was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning program.

Project teams from across the world started working on Jetpack-based prototypes in December 2009. After the first round of seminars, ten finalists were invited to attend Design Camp, a hands-on workshop for hacking Jetpack-based add-ons and the future of open education, which took place just before SXSW. The overall winners were selected by a panel of judges and the Design Challenge participants themselves.

The Design Challenge finalists showcase different ways of learning on the open web:

Clozefox – Clozefox turns any webpage into an interactive, educational and fun language learning resource, and share your progress on twitter.

Cohere – Collaboratively annotate the web with Cohere. Create semantic connections between annotations while discussing them with other users online.

ExpressionWidgets – Create, capture and share web content like text and images collaboratively with Expression Widgets.

HooverNotes – Annotate the web like a book with HooverNotes. Leave comments, highlight content and collect pieces of content from multiple sites or a single web page.

LangLadder – Learn a new language while doing your everyday internet activities. Langladder integrates language exercises into activities like email, social networking and blogs.

LineHive.com – Hyperlink storytelling. Create paths through the internet by grouping webpages and sites into a timeline you can share, tweet, or embed.

Mupple – Keep best practices and experiences with Mupple by recording your web activity and sharing them with others on the web.

Net Detective – Joe Denton is one of the best gumshoes on the force, but he can’t solve these cases without your Internet detective skills in this jetpack that turns Internet search skills into a game for kids.

Rubrick – Create, share and reuse teaching rubrics using Rubrick and allow both teachers and students to get on the same page.

Study Troll – Be sure you know your facts before the Study Troll comes and demands an answer in this add-on that turns any web session into an interactive flash card quiz.

We are excited to launch Rock Your Firefox today as a place where Firefox users can learn how to customize their Web experience and discover cool new add-ons.

The first add-on featured on Rock Your Firefox is Yoono, the most popular social networking add-on that nearly 4 million people use today. Yoono is a cool sidebar that integrates all of your social networks and displays them in one stream.  There are thousands of Firefox Add-ons to choose from and hundreds of millions of people worldwide have already downloaded nearly 2 billion add-ons.

Get ready to Rock Your Firefox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see what Firefox Add-on is featured next!

There is exactly one week left to vote for Firefox in the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards. The nominations are in and Firefox is a finalist in the “Best Major Desktop Browser”, “Best Mac Browser” and “Best Mobile Browser” categories. Follow the links below to vote for Firefox as your favorite browser in each category. You can vote through February 25 as many times as you’d like, so please vote and tell your friends!

• Best Major Desktop Browser
• Best Mac Browser
• Best Mobile Browser

The Web Browser section of the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards honors the year’s best browsers. This is the first year that About Web Browsers is a part of the awards.

You can also vote for your favorite Firefox Add-ons in the following categories:

• Best Overall Add-on (non-security)
• Best Privacy/Security Add-on
• Best Browser Theme
• Best User Script

What are the About.com Reader’s Choice Awards?

For the first time, About.com’s Computing Channel is running a coordinated award program that will honor the best products, services and innovations in dozens of categories. The awards cover everything from phones and phone apps to high-powered desktop publishing programs and PCs. The program grew out of a popular IM Reader’s Choice Awards program, which took place in 2009 and 2008.

Editor’s note: On Feb 5, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.

Last week we announced that the Weave Sync add-on for Firefox is now generally available to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences.

Using this free browser add-on from Mozilla Labs, you can use secure mechanisms to access all of your personal data (including your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs) across all of your supported devices, making your Web experience instantly more personal and useful.  And all of your data is encrypted end-to-end to help ensure your privacy.

This week we’re launching the first set of developer resources including Weave Sync & User APIs, documentation, and Python & Javascript client libraries — to increase the number of places where you can securely access, and have your personal data readily available to you, independent of whether or not Firefox is available.

This first set of APIs focuses on enabling Weave clients to provide user’s access to their stored data from other devices and environments.

Future APIs will provide third-party web sites and applications the ability to request permission and obtain explicit access only to specific user data to augment a users’ Web experience, e.g. providing personalized recommendations based upon a user’s bookmarks or search history.

We’re also releasing a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs, including:

• Web-based Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer implemented in Javascript.
  
• iPhone Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer on the iPhone, including support for a Firefox-like URL bar as a standalone application.

• commandline Weave client: Command-line application and library written in Python.
• WebOS Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer for Palm’s WebOS.

How to Get Involved

• Dive into the Weave Services Developer Resource site
• Post your design and early prototypes to Weave developers discussion group
• Join us in #labs on irc.mozilla.org

We’ve also tried to anticipate your questions, and have posted an FAQ .

– Ragavan Srinivasan and Mike Hanson, on behalf of the Weave team

We’re pleased to announce that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. Starting today, Nokia N900 owners can enjoy many of the same Firefox features they know and love on the desktop on their mobile device.

Bringing Firefox to mobile devices is the next step toward fulfilling Mozilla’s mission of providing one Web that everyone can access, regardless of device or location. Secure, powerful, and customizable, Firefox is the most modern mobile Web browser available and is optimized for a mobile experience. Key design principles are at the heart of the mobile browsing experience including minimal typing, seamless synchronization with desktop Firefox and the ability to take your Firefox with you, to name a few.

Firefox for mobile is packed with your favorite features, including:

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
• Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
• Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
• Available in more than 30 languages and counting

Firefox is the first mobile Web browser to support add-ons. With add-ons, you can customize your Firefox by adding features that help make your browser your own. Add-ons like AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides become especially handy when you’re out and about on your mobile device. You can both discover and install add-ons directly from your Nokia N900. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile and the number is growing every day.

We strongly recommend that you install the YouTube Enabler add-on from within the Add-ons Manager.  Tap on the install button, restart Firefox, and you’re all set to watch YouTube videos.

Just as Firefox does for the desktop, Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications. Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser. Visit the Develop for mobile page to learn more.

Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download on the Nokia N900. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.

This is an exciting entrance into the mobile ecosystem and Firefox for Maemo5 is just the beginning – look out for lots more to come from Firefox for mobile this year.

Editor’s note: On Jan 28, Mozilla Labs released Weave 1.0. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.

Get Up and Go! – With Weave Sync, open web sites on your desktop are instantly available on your mobile device.

• Learn more about the Mozilla Labs Weave project
• Read the Release Notes for the 1.0 release for important information.
  
• Get technical support and help
• Report bugs
• Get the source code
• Discuss, debate and add to the design in the Weave discussion group
• Join us in #labs on irc.mozilla.org

Editor’s note: Today, Mozilla released the third Firefox for Maemo Release Candidate. Check out Director of Mobile, Stuart Parmenter’s blog post reposted below.

We’re excited to bring you the third release candidate of Firefox for Maemo.  Since RC2, we fixed several usability bugs that were found, as well as addressed a number of performance issues.  Based on feedback we’ve received so far, we were able to find and fix several crash bugs.  To improve page load times and responsiveness, we tuned a number of preferences and improved several algorithms.  We’ve sped up zooming and made our panning even better.

If you’ve already got RC2 installed on your N900 or N810, you will be receiving a software update shortly.  Otherwise, if you’re viewing this on your device, you can install it from here.

We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for this release.  The Adobe Flash plugin used on many sites degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards.  If you wish to enable our experimental plugin support, you will be able to manually via about:config, but do so at your own risk.  We are working on an add-on that will allow the user to have control of which sites to enable plugins for, as some sites, like YouTube, do work quite well.

As always, we’re looking for feedback and suggestions.