Mozilla Releases Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate - PCWorld

Image via CrunchBaseMozilla Releases Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate - PCWorld

The Mozilla Foundation has issued the first release candidate of Firefox version 4.0, finishing a grueling and ambitious beta development cycle for the browser.

This release candidate represents what the development team feels is a finished browser, said Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development, in an interview.

The quality assurance team will still take feedback from users over the next few weeks, but if no major bugs are found, Mozilla expects to issue the full production release of the browser by the end of the month, he said.

If so, March will be a busy month for the ongoing browser wars. In addition to the pending final release of Firefox 4, Microsoft plans to launch version 9 of its Internet Explorer on March 14. And Google released version 10 of its Chrome browser on Monday.

Version 4 of Firefox is a major upgrade for the open-source browser, and includes a wealth of new features and enhancements.

The user interface has been completely revamped and streamlined, with the menu bar condensed under a single button. The JavaScript Engine has been overhauled for speedier performance. The Add-ons Manager has been upgraded to a full-page interface.

Tab management has also taken a great leap forward. Users can bundle sets of tabs into different groups, under a feature called Panorama. They can add small permanent tabs to the top of the browser, for those pages and applications they continually keep open.

For the first time, Firefox will allow users to synchronize their bookmarks across different computers and even with Android-based mobile phones. This is also the first version of the browser to include the Do Not Track feature, which can alert website owners if the user wishes to opt out of third-party Web tracking.

The release candidate is available for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, and supports more than 70 languages. Current users of the beta version will have their browsers automatically updated.

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Mozilla delivers latest Firefox 4 beta | Browsers & Add-Ons | Macworld

Mozilla delivers latest Firefox 4 beta | Browsers & Add-Ons | Macworld

Mozilla on Friday shipped Firefox 4 Beta 9, perhaps the last it will release before it pushes toward a final version now planned to ship by the end of February.

The newest beta includes fewer major changes than its Dec. 22 predecessor, with just a pair of performance improvements—one to the code that handles the browserʼs bookmarks and history list — called out by Mozilla.

According to Mozilla, Beta 9 sports 662 bug fixes or changes, less than half of the 1,400 it made in Beta 8, which launched a little over three weeks ago.

Although Mozilla picked up the pace between Beta 8 and 9—the interval between Beta 7 and 8 was six weeks—the company is pushing developers to get the code in shape for a “release candidate,” the last major milestone before the browser is deemed good enough to officially ship.

Earlier this week, Mozillaʼs head of platform engineering said there were still too many “hard blocker” bugs—flaws that would prevent Firefox 4 from final release—and urged “press hard” toward a February finish line. In a follow-up blog post Thursday, Johnathan Nightingale, the director of Firefox development,

called on all programmers to reevaluate their blocking bugs.

Saying that developers must take a “hard look at our blocker list,” Nightingale added that, “at this point, very few bugs are worth holding back that much awesome.”

Nightingale said that as of Thursday, 143 hard blocker bugs remained, and detailed which flaws fit into the category. “A hard blocker is a failure of a core part of our release criteria, e.g. a crash, a memory leak, a performance hit, a security issue, a [user interface] breakage that canʼt be recovered from, an incompatibility we canʼt stomach,” he said.

Itʼs unclear if Mozilla will do a 10th beta.

Although Firefox Beta 10 remains on a still-current schedule that shows on Mozillaʼs Web site, on Monday Damon Sicore, who leads the companyʼs engineering group, hinted that Beta 9 might be the last.

“If we canʼt get [bugs] to zero in reasonable time, weʼll repeat [a tenth beta],” he said on a Firefox developers mailing list .

By Mozillaʼs schedule, Beta 9 was nearly a month late.

After Firefox wraps up its beta cycle, Mozilla will issue at least one release candidate to shake out any final bugs. The schedule does not show a target ship date for the release candidate.

Nightingale said that he wanted to see a release candidate soon.

“Firefox 4 is good for the Web, good for our users, and puts the heat on other vendors to up their own game,” he said in his blog post yesterday. “We need to ship it ASAP—we want release candidates in weeks, not months.”

Mozillaʼs biggest rival is also nearing release candidate on its next browser. According to several online sources, Microsoft will deliver the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) later this month, perhaps on Jan. 28.

Microsoft has said it will ship the final edition of IE9 before the end of March.

Firefox currently accounts for 22.8 percent of all browsers used worldwide, a drop of two percentage points since its peak in November 2009. Internet Explorerʼs 57.1 percent share during December 2010 was 5.6 percentage points lower than the same time the year before.

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Firefox 4: Path to Shipping - mozilla.dev.planning | Google Groups

Image via WikipediaFirefox 4: Path to Shipping - mozilla.dev.planning | Google Groups

We've worked tremendously hard on Firefox 4, and it's time to ship it. I'm seeing the same burst of excitement and activity that we've seen in the endgame of every release. Over the past several days, component leads have again reduced their blockers by identifying hard blockers and those we can live without. We've around 160 hard blockers remaining, and historically it has taken us six weeks to reach RC once we have 100 blockers left. We must press hard now.

To Finish:

1) We have to reach Release Candidate status as quickly as possible, ideally finishing the hard blockers by the beginning of February and shipping final before the end of February. We'll need your help to balance these targets against the need to build a high quality product.

2) Bug counts demand another beta. We'll drive the beta bugs to zero and ship another beta. If we can't get them to zero in reasonable time, we'll repeat, deliberately. It depends on how quickly we can drive down the list of hard blockers that need beta feedback. This is our top development priority, since it pushes the rest of our schedule.

3) We need *everyone* to help in testing. Specifically: Do not disable Flash, Silverlight, or other major plugins as we need as many people testing these as possible. Windows users: We need to know if you are affected by hardware acceleration causing crashes or other issues. Don't just assume that someone else has filed a bug already. Make sure. Ask someone if you don't know how. This is very important.

MOST IMPORTANT: We must ship the best possible product we can. If a blocker needs more time, tell release drivers and component leads immediately. If you disagree with a blocking call, say so loudly. Do not be timid. This is your product, we need you to own it.

I know you're all tired and stressed. You all do incredible work every day, and you've built an amazing product. Stay focused. Be nice to each other. Firefox 4 is gonna kick ass, and you should be fiercely proud of it.

All my best,

Damon

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LibreOffice Is Taking Shape With Third Beta - PCWorld Business Center

Image via WikipediaLibreOffice Is Taking Shape With Third Beta - PCWorld Business Center

It's been less than two months since the Document Foundation announced that it was launching its own "fork" of the OpenOffice.org productivity software suite, but already its new LibreOffice alternative is beginning to take shape.

On Thursday the third beta version of LibreOffice 3.3 was released, and it's available for download for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. While not intended for production use, the current version of the free, fully open source software gives an early glimpse at LibreOffice's reinterpretation of office productivity, and it's an exciting one.

‘Our Code Base Is Getting Old'

LibreOffice 3.3 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.3, but it adds numerous code optimizations and new features that offer a first preview of new development directions for 2011 and beyond.

First, developers are now working full steam at improving the overall quality of the OpenOffice.org code, with a focus on easy testability and quality assurance. New developers and code hackers are handling the bulk of this activity, the group said.

"Our code base is getting old," explained Charles Schulz, a member of the Document Foundation's steering committee, in a recent blog post. "Worse, the whole frigging software looks and feels like we're stuck in the Bush area. Many things were not fixed, some others need a complete rewrite."

More...

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Firefox Patched for 'Stability' - PCWorld

Image via WikipediaFirefox Patched for 'Stability' - PCWorld

Mozilla pushed out a patch to all versions of Firefox, including the beta Firefox 4, to repair issues that caused crashes.

Gregg Keizer

Sunday, September 19, 2010 05:00 AM PDT

Mozilla last week updated all versions of Firefox, including the beta of the upcoming Firefox 4, to fix stability problems that crashed the browser.

Artwork: Chip TaylorFirefox 3.6.10 and Firefox 3.5.13, which Mozilla launched late Wednesday, addressed what Mozilla said was "a single stability issue affecting a limited number of users."

A crash problem surfaced last week after Mozilla released Firefox 3.6.9 and Firefox 3.5.12 to patch 15 vulnerabilities . Users of all three editions -- Windows, Mac and Linux -- reported repeated crashes during browser startup after they'd updated to Firefox 3.6.9/3.5.12.

Mozilla halted updates while it investigated. The company has since restarted automatic update delivery.

Mozilla also upgraded Firefox 4's beta this week to deal with a stability bug on that preview.

"We've decided to issue a small beta update in order to fix a stability issue on Windows and some rendering and keyboard/mouse focus issues on OSX related to plug-ins," Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, said in a message posted to the "mozilla.dev.planning" mailing list.

Like the bug in Firefox 3.6.9/3.5.12, the one in Firefox 4 Beta 5 crashed the Windows browser on or shortly after startup. Mozilla's bug- and code change-tracking Bugzilla database offered more information on the crash bug, which quickly climbed to the top of the crash report chart.

Mozilla pushed the quick fix to users as Firefox 4 Beta 6 on Tuesday.

Because Mozilla had to issue the stability patch, the company also designated Beta 7 as the new feature-frozen version, the one that locks in what will be included and drops what won't. Beta 7 is slated to ship later this month.

"What was known as 'Firefox 4 Beta 6' will now be 'Firefox 4 Beta 7,'" said Beltzner. "We're not adding a beta to our cycle, we're just issuing some fixes for stability and usability to the beta audience, and our numbering system requires that we bump the version number."

Mozilla has already ditched a pair of anticipated features from Firefox 4 to make its deadlines: Account Manager, a beefed-up password manager built into the browser to simplify Web site sign-up; and Inspector, a tool aimed at Web designers and developers who want to drill down for more information on each element in an HTML page.

More...

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iOS 4.1 Beta: Game Center, Facetime Favorites, Spelling Correction, More... - Mac Rumors

iOS 4.1 Beta: Game Center, Facetime Favorites, Spelling Correction, More... - Mac Rumors

Aside from the signal bar changes, Apple has also made a number of other small improvements to iOS in their latest beta which was released to developers tonight.

Game Center returns to the beta releases with a brand new look (screenshot above). Game Center is Apple's matchmaking and leaderboard social network for iOS games. The lack of Game Center in the official iOS 4.0 release caused some confusion, but Apple had never intended Gamecenter to be launched alongside 4.0. Instead, Apple had promised Game Center to come out later this year.

It remains in beta testing for now with no announced release date. The style of the app, however, has been dramatically changed from the original release.

We've also collected a list of other changes that users have noticed in the 4.1 beta.

- Flash/Camera buttons reposition themselves in landscape (see above).

- Favorites in the Phone app can now be added as Voice or Facetime.

- Check Spelling can be turned Off in Setting

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Google to rev up Chrome release schedule | Browsers & Add-Ons | Macworld

Google to rev up Chrome release schedule | Browsers & Add-Ons | Macworld

Google on Thursday said it will pick up Chrome’s release pace by issuing a new version of the browser about every six weeks. According to Anthony Laforge, a Chrome program manager, the new schedule will put a a new “stable” version of the browser in users’ hands roughly twice often as in the past. The picked-up pace will debut over the next few months.

Google calls the production line of Chrome its “stable” build, but also maintains two other release editions—“beta” and “dev”—that produce more frequent updates.

Laforge said Google had several goals in mind for the move, including getting new features to users faster, releasing updates on a more predictable schedule and taking pressure off its developers to finish features.

Increasing the frequency of Chrome releases means programmers won’t have to rush a feature to make an every-three-month deadline, delay the next browser release if they wanted to squeeze in the new functionality or ship the browser with the new feature switched off, said Laforge.

“With the new schedule, if a given feature is not complete, it will simply ride on the next release train when it’s ready,” he said in an entry on the company’s Chromium project blog. “Since those trains come quickly and regularly (every six weeks), there is less stress.” More...

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