outaTiME (refinn dot com)

Editor’s note: Mozilla announced the release of Fennec alpha 2, an early developer release of the mobile version of Firefox, on Monday, December 22, 2008.  See Engineering Manager Stuart Parmenter’s comprehensive post for more details, excerpted here:

We’re happy to announce that our second alpha release of Fennec has come together.  While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted, we’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance.  We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading.

The release notes have information on a quick start, how to install, what’s new, known issues and how to provide feedback. So if you’re interested in getting involved with Mozilla Mobile, install Fennec and tell us what you think.

Congratulations to the entire mobile team!

(Via The Mozilla Blog.)

John Resig and Jan Odvarko have announced something pretty darn cool, FireUnit.

FireUnit provides a simple JavaScript API for doing simple test logging and viewing within a new tab of Firebug.

The example given shows the API nicely:

// Simple true-like/false-like testing
fireunit.ok( true, "I'm going to pass!" );
fireunit.ok( false, "I'm going to fail!" );
 
// Compare two strings - shows a diff of the
// results if they're different
fireunit.compare(
  "The lazy fox jumped over the log.",
  "The lazy brown fox jumped the log.",
  "Are these two strings the same?"
);
 
// Compare a string using a regular expression
fireunit.reCompare(
  /The .* fox jumped the log./,
  "The lazy brown fox jumped the log.",
  "Compare a string using a RegExp."
);
 
// Display the total results
fireunit.testDone();
 
// -- browser events
 
// You can also simulate browser events
var input = document.getElementsByTagName("input")[0];
fireunit.mouseDown( input );
fireunit.click( input );
fireunit.focus( input );
fireunit.key( input, "a" );
 
// -- Run batches
 
// Or run multiple pages of tests:
fireunit.runTests("test2.html", "test3.html");
 
// Place at the end of every test file in order to continue
fireunit.testDone();

(Via Ajaxian » Front Page.)

Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.x users on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:30 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement , reposted below, for more details.

(Via The Mozilla Blog.)

Please note: Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.1 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• This beta is now available in 54 languages - get your local version and let us know if it looks right.
• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you’ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!
• New functions that make it easy to remove the history of your past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website.
• New support for web worker threads.
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Testers can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 54 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.1 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.4 and Firefox 2.0.0.18 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:

• Firefox 3.0.4 is available at http://getfirefox.com/
• Firefox 2.0.0.18 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3 or Firefox 2, 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 review the Firefox 3.0.4 Release Notes and the Firefox 2.0.0.18 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 2.0.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.4 by downloading it from http://getfirefox.com/.

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)

Mark Finkle has announced the first alpha release of Mozilla’s mobile web browser, Fennec. While there was some discussion in recent days of progress on a Windows Mobile version, this release runs on the Nokia N800 and N810 only.

However, Mozilla has also provided an emulator for folks to run Fennec on their desktop machine and are soliciting feedback from the community especially on the browser UI but also on other aspects of the browser as well.

Fennec (Mobile Firefox) has reached milestone 9, which is also our first alpha! We’re calling this release the User Experience alpha.

As with the previous milestones, M9 is targeted at the Nokia N800/N810 (Maemo) Internet tablet. Yes, we have made great progress on Windows Mobile, but no milestone releases yet. However, in addition to the native Maemo release, we are also releasing desktop versions of Fennec. That’s right, you can install Fennec on your Windows, OS X or Linux desktop too! We want you to be able to experiment, provide feedback, write add-ons and generally get involved with the Mozilla Mobile project, even if you don’t have a device.

(Via Ajaxian » Front Page.)

Please note: Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.1 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

More information about new web developer features are available in the Web Tech blog post.

Testers can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 36 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.1 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)

In order to repair a problem experienced by some users with the Password Manager feature in Firefox 3.0.2, and as part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.3 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads at http://getfirefox.com/

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3 or Firefox 2, 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 review the Firefox 3.0.3 Release Notes.

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.2 and Firefox 2.0.0.17 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:

• Firefox 3.0.2 is available at http://getfirefox.com/
• Firefox 2.0.0.17 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3 or Firefox 2, 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 review the Firefox 3.0.2 Release Notes and the Firefox 2.0.0.17 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 2.0.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.2 by downloading it from http://getfirefox.com/.

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)

The second developer milestone of the next release of Firefox - code named Shiretoko Alpha 2 - is now available for download. Shiretoko is built on pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, which forms the core of rich internet applications such as Firefox. Please note that this release is intended for developers and testers only.

This Alpha of Shiretoko / Gecko 1.9.1 introduces several new features:

• Support for the HTML 5 <video> element
• Initial support for web worker threads
• You can now drag and drop tabs between browser windows
• New selector to create areas of Aero-style “glass” in XUL
• Support for CSS 2.1 properties: ::before and ::after, and white-space:pre-line
• Support for CSS 3 properties: -moz-border-image, word-wrap: break-word, text-shadow, box-shadow and column-rule
• Performance improvements and new preference values for color management profile support

Anyone interested in Shiretoko should read the release notes, as well as the “Firefox 3.1 For Developers” article on the Mozilla Developer Center before downloading. Please use the following links to download Shiretoko:

• Windows: Shiretoko Alpha 2 Setup.exe
• Mac OS X: Shiretoko Alpha 2.dmg
• Linux: shiretoko-alpha2.tar.bz2

We would appreciate hearing about any feedback you have, or any bugs you may find.

(Those interested in testing Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine “Tracemonkey” should note that it is not included in this development milestone. If you’re interested in that technology, please obtain a nightly build and follow these instructions)

(Via Mozilla Developer News.)