Since it already got its holiday present, the new three-year search agreement with Google, Mozilla has went into a gift-giving mode and served up the first public beta build of the next Firefox release, version 10.0.

According to the developers, Firefox 10 comes with Full Screen APIs (so web apps can run in full screen mode), with support for CSS3 3D-Transforms and WebGL Anti-Aliasing, and an added HTML5 treat, the < bdi > element for bi-directional text isolation.

The beta also includes a forward button which stays hidden until you navigate back, an Inspect tool with content highlighting, IndexedDB APIs, and a few fixes. Just like its predecessors, the Firefox 10.0 beta is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The download links can be found here.

Open source software supporter Mozilla has today announced two things, the launch of the 9.0 version of Firefox, and the signing of a new search deal with Google. Firefox 9.0 features the Type Inference which boosts JavaScript performance, it brings better theme integration on Mac OS X Lion, and also includes goodies like:

- two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
- support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
- support for font-stretch
- improved support for text-overflow
- improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
- fixes for several stability and security issues

Google Chrome is a fast and functional web browser. Let's get that out of the way first. But one of the main reasons a largely successful corporation put resources into developing a web-browser into a market that isn't very profitable, is cost-cutting. Since it's inception, the search bar Mozilla Firefox came with, has Google as its default search provider. Every time people search using that search bar in Firefox, Mozilla Foundation makes money. It is estimated that these Google searches amount to a majority of Mozilla's revenue, as Google pays it as much as 50 million dollars an year. Google Chrome, despite its genuine merits, is a cost-cutting operation. The more people use it over Firefox, the less Google has to pay Mozilla.

Web security researchers have historically rated Google Chrome has having the worst security and privacy compared to Firefox, and Internet Explorer (read this, and here), but the most recent research by Denver-based security consultancy Accuvant claimed that Google Chrome has the best security and privacy features, while Mozilla Firefox has the worst. Want to hear the kicker? That research by Accuvant was funded by Google. Want to hear another one? A similar research firm that has historically done vendor-funded research, NSS Labs, voiced strong objections to Accuvant's research, calling it an all-out attempt to malign Mozilla Firefox.

According to the latest data sourced by StatCounter for the month of November 2011, Google Chrome has overtaken Mozilla Firefox in terms of web-browser software market-share. The GlobalStats data provides a worldwide picture, and not just specific to a region. According to the data, Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox's 25.23%.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%. Google Chrome began in mid-2008 as an experimental minimalist UI web-browser based on the Chromium project, it is a multi-process tabbed web browser based on Apple Webkit and several other pieces of free, licensed, and open-source technologies. Its market share is on the rise. The stats can be accessed here.

You know what, we won't even go through the drill of expressing surprise that a new major version of Firefox is released on a nearly-monthly basis. Mozilla released Firefox 8.0, about 7 months after it released Firefox 4.0. And they look similar, except that the new one looks more polished. Granted, drastic UI changes can hit users' learning curve and preferences. The new UI sports essentially the same layout as its predecessors since version 4.0, but the elements look designed better, fused into the theme. It's the under-the-hood changes that are counting. Mozilla would never pack so many background changes to the monthly updates of Firefox 3.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 8.0

With this release, Mozilla Firefox has the following changes over the previous generation:

Mozilla are developing a full-on 3D game engine for their Firefox browser. It looks like having a viable high performance game engine built right into the browser could allow first person shooter type games to reach a much wider audience and possibly even raise the bar for integrated graphics - we're already seeing this with the upcoming Sandy Bridge E processors. The project is called Paladin, which is developing the Gladius 3D gaming engine. To help test it, a basic 3D game, RescueFox has been prototyped, although that's not going to be developed further, but forking is welcomed. We'll let the Mozilla development blog take it away from here.

A little over a month after releasing Firefox 6.0, and quickly following it up with two minor updates (6.0.1 and 6.0.2), Mozilla released its next "major" version, Firefox 7.0 into the release channel. It is now clear that Mozilla Firefox is playing catch-up with other popular web-browsers in some sort of a version number game. The three year old Google Chrome is already into version 14, with version 16 already in the dev channel.

While Firefox users will not be in for a different user interface (it's bad to drastically change it from time to time), Firefox 7 does seem to come with several under-the-hood changes. To begin with, the Windows version features a brand-new rendering back-end that speeds up Canvas, a tweaked Sync system that instantly syncs changes to bookmarks and saved passwords, support for text-overflow: ellipsis, compliance with the Web Timing specification, WebSocket protocol updated from version 7 to 8, and improved support for MathML. The only UI change is that the protocol of the page loaded is hidden. The full URL will be copied when you copy the address in the bar. Firefox 7 is launched for all platforms it's available in: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 7

Mozilla's Firefox version number inflation drive continues as it plays catch up with Google Chrome 13 and Internet Explorer 9. Released today, Firefox 6 packs small number of new features, improved font rendering, along with the usual load of security and bug fixes. To begin with, the navigation toolbar got a couple of updates: the address bar now highlights the domain name of the loaded webpage. The site identity box (which displays the favicon, and security status of the loaded webpage), is now "streamlined" with the rest of the address bar.

Firefox 6 supports the latest draft version of WebSockets with a prefixed API. It adds support for EventSource / server-sent events, window.matchMedia. There's an improved web-console to help developers. The browser has better discoverability with Firefox Sync. It starts faster when using Panorama. Again, there's the a load of security and stability fixes.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 6

One of the biggest promoters of open source software, and the group behind one of the most popular web-browsers, Mozilla Foundation, has undertaken a project of developing a mobile operating system referred to as "B2G" or Boot to Gecko, with the catchphrase "booting to the web". We expect it to be functionally modeled somewhere between Google's Android and Chrome operating systems. Essentially it is an operating system that boots to the web-browser that can get you browsing the web directly, or use cloud-based application software.

B2G might target a variety of devices ranging from smartphones to tablets and netbooks. Smartphone essentials such as telephony, SMS, camera, Bluetooth, NFC (near-field communication) and USB, will work with the browser via new web APIs. Applications can be cloud-based widgets, or software that uses open developer environments. Basic applications will be functionally identical to many of the apps that ship with Android or even Apple iOS. What's more, B2G's kernel and booting substrate will be designed to be 100% compatible with today's Android-compatible devices such as phones and tablets, so manufacturers don't have to redesign anything on their side. At this stage the project is still in its infancy, and is seeking community participation, the same participation that made Firefox and Thunderbird applications with the quality of proprietary software.

Mozilla is so frantically inflating Firefox version numbers, that its latest alpha (Aurora) build is already at version 7, less than a month after Firefox 5 final was released. Mozilla is playing catch-up with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer in the version number game. While informed users might find this silly, perhaps there is some data motivating Mozilla to inflate its version numbers, other than the fact that Google Chrome has already grabbed 20% of the browser market share, discretely updates itself, doesn't brag too much about version numbers; and the fact that Internet Explorer is back in the race with version 9 that greatly improved performance and features.

In any case, Firefox 7 is said to bring with it some new features, including faster startup time, better rendering performance, and more importantly, lower memory footprint. It also features better font rendering when GPU acceleration is enabled. An improved Sync manager syncs bookmarks and passwords instantly with your other devices. Firefox 7 Aurora (alpha, 7.0a2) can be downloaded in a wide range of languages, and for Windows, Mac, and Linux, from this page. Aurora builds can be unstable and buggy.

There must be some latent value in version number. Close to 3 years old, Google Chrome is already at version 14 in its developer channel. The grand old man of web-browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), which has a much slower release cycle, is at version 9. The second oldest browser in production, Opera, is at version 11. That leaves Mozilla Firefox, which is relatively newer to the market, but crawled its way past generations by versions 1.0x or 0.5x, with 0.0.1x in near-monthly minor updates. With the browser-wars hotting up as Google Chrome maintains its breakneck development cycle and MSIE regained competitiveness with version 9, Mozilla Firefox is ceding market-share. Perhaps this is pushing Mozilla to speed up its update cycle.

In Mozilla's case, this seems more like an version number inflation, because Firefox 4 was released just this March, and has only had one minor update since (4.0.1). The group is already looking to release the next "big release", Firefox 5, on 21 June, 2011. Its file locations on Mozilla's FTP are already leaked. Unlike with older major releases where each comes with a changed user interface, layout, or at least new icons; Firefox 5 user interface is identical to that of Firefox 4. The changes here are a faster webpage rendering engine, improved HTML5 support, the ability to pin bookmarked webpages to the Windows Taskbar a-là MSIE 9, and a built-in Adobe PDF reader a-là Chrome.

DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 5 (Win32)

Released to the web, Mozilla Firefox 4 has been downloaded over 6 million times in 24 hours since its launch. The figure is three times greater than that of Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, which clocked about 2 million downloads in its first 24 hours since launch. Firefox 4 is the latest version of the popular open-source web-browser software, it introduced radical design changes to its user interface, and embraced a faster GPU-accelerated rendering engine. Firefox 4 can be downloaded from here.

Mozilla Corporation unveiled the "latest and greatest" version of its popular web-browser, Mozilla Firefox 4. With this release, the open-source browser achieves all essential features common with the latest generation of web-browsers that include Google Chrome 10+ and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, which are: HTML5 support, and GPU-accelerated webpage drawing. Apart from being a lot faster than Firefox 3.6, the new browser sports a completely new user interface that shifts tabs to the titlebar, shifts menus to a "Firefox" button, and consolidates the address bar, search bar, and navigation buttons into a single line, which it refers to as the "Awesome Bar". Apart from a new bookmark manager, Firefox lets you group tabs to streamline multitasking on the browser. Mozilla Firefox 4 will be available to a variety of platforms.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 4

After the much hyped Internet Explorer 9 launch, it's time for the open-source Firefox to get its facelift. Mozilla has decided to launch the stable version of Mozilla Firefox 4 on the 22nd of March. Firefox 4 is a single-process web-browser that runs plugins in separate container processes. It will be up to date with the latest in web standards, including HTML5, will feature a much faster Javascript engine, and will use GPU hardware acceleration to speed up rendering. March 22 is turning out to be quite a day for the tech sphere, with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590 graphics accelerator, and EA/Crytek's self-proclaimed blockbuster game release, Crysis 2, also releasing on the same day.

The Khronos Group released the final WebGL 1.0 specification to enable hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in HTML5 Web browsers without the need for plug-ins. WebGL defines a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0 to allow rich 3D graphics within a browser on any platform supporting the industry-standard OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics APIs. WebGL has the support of major silicon and browser vendors including Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera with multiple browsers already shipping with WebGL implementations including the beta releases for Mozilla Firefox 4.0, all channels of Google Chrome 9.0, an Opera preview build, and Apple Mac OS Safari nightly builds.

WebGL leverages the pervasive availability of OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics on almost all browser-capable desktop, mobile and embedded platforms and the recent developments in Web technology including the massive increases in JavaScript performance. The ability for Web developers to directly access OpenGL-class graphics directly from JavaScript, and freely mix 3D with other HTML content, will enable a new wave of innovation in Web gaming, educational and training applications and graphically rich user interfaces to make the Web more enjoyable, productive and intuitive.

Everyone who is more than familiar with the term 'the Internet', may have come across, or has even been affected by Mozilla Firefox, one of the most popular web-browser software. The cross-platform, open-source web-browser was born out of the Mozilla project, after practical, and minimalist simplification of the user interface. This, coupled with good performance for the stature of an Internet Explorer alternative, being safer against spyware, popups, and malicious addon software, quickly became popular, and part of the web-centric pop-culture.

Firefox has also helped shape several things in the connected IT industry. It replenished the credibility of open-source model of software development, and forced content providers to adhere to open-standards. Firefox today turns five years old, which is 'a long time on the Internet', as its team puts it. The SpreadFirefox community have rolled out a portal celebrating the event, it can be found here.

Mozilla today announced the newest stable version of Firefox, version 3.5, which has been available in various developer preview forms for months. The new version is a milestone release, unlike timely updates that Firefox receives on a near-monthly basis, and boasts of better performance. For instance, Firefox 3.5 outperforms its previous version (Firefox 3) by over 100% in the SunSpider benchmark.

Under the hood, this new version extends support for HTML5 audio and video elements, including native support for open-source formats such as Ogg Theora. It uses a faster TraceMonkey Javascript engine (which is behind the performance boost in SunSpider), It supports downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, canvas-driven text, ICC profiles, and SVG transformations. The user interface remains fairly identical to its predecessor, except for a few minor changes. The browser finally supports a private browsing feature which MSIE 8 (InPrivate) and Google Chrome (Incognito mode) have. Existing users of Firefox will be prompted to upgrade to the new browser. Others can find it here.

For the upcoming new Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko), Mozilla is planning an important final update: fresh new looks of the venerable Firefox icon. Mozilla has already announced its intention to slightly revisit the logo and today the team behind Firefox's development issued first renders. The refreshed icon is work of Jon Hicks, the original logo creator, and from his words it "introduced additional detail to the fur, and the flames starting to wrap around planet mozilla which significantly modernizes and streamlines the appearance of the icon." With the new icon, Mozilla aims to stamp the various changes it has made during the evoluion of the Firefox web browser. First release candidate of Firefox 3.5 is slated for June this year, no one can predict when the final version will be out.

Mozilla has just released details on what they plan to include for the future version 3.6 of their Firefox browser, and so far it's looking good. Logically, version 3.6 will come after Firefox 3.5 "Shiretoko" is released. The code name for Firefox 3.6 is "Namoroka", from the Namoroka National Park located in the northwestern part of Madagascar. Namoroka will be based on Gecko 1.9.2, with an intended release target of early-to-mid 2010. For the full development schedule of Mozilla Firefox 3.6 please visit the official Mozilla wiki page here.

Mozilla today released an important security update to Firefox. With sub-version 3.0.8, The browser has been patched for two critical security vulnerabilities, which are all that make it to this release.

The first vulnerability, titled "Arbitrary code execution via XUL tree element" could allow attackers to compromise a box by using a browser crash to run arbitrary code. The second one titled "XSL Transformation vulnerability" is where attackers get to use browser crashes caused by XSL stylesheets during XSL transformation, to run arbitrary code. For more information, refer to the Security Advisories page for Firefox. Existing Firefox versions will be updated to version 3.0.8 automatically by default. Firefox 3.0.8 can be downloaded from the Mozilla Website.

Exactly as predicted, Mozilla today released version 3.0.7 of the beloved Firefox web browser. Available now for Windows, Mac, and Linux users, Firefox 3.0.7 fixes several security and stability issues present in previous versions of the browser. For the complete list of bugs fixed click here.

DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7

Last week Mozilla developers confirmed that they will add another beta to the Firefox 3.1 development schedule, meaning that Mozilla users will have to wait a bit longer for the new final release. The reason hiding behind this delay is the recently found critical bug in the browser's TraceMonkey java script engine."We're going to wrap up Beta 3 in the next week regardless of 'upvar' status," said Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering. "A fourth beta will follow approximately six weeks after, as a vehicle for more testing of TraceMonkey, video, Places and other eagerly-awaited improvements, as well as feedback from Beta 3," he added.
Originally Mozilla Firefox 3.1 was slated to launch in late 2008, but the browser's progress has been much slower than planned. With this last update on the development schedule, the browser will possibly ship in the second quarter of this year or even later.

There is a valid reason behind why Safari is growing in browser market-share, apart from the fact that iPhone carries it: it is arguably the fastest browser there is. The fourth beta version that surfaced earlier this week went a few notches ahead of Firefox (Minefield) 3.2a1 and Google Chrome in a review conducted by CNet, to take the top-sport for the fastest web-browser. Internet Explorer (IE) versions 7 and 8, Opera 9.6, Firefox 3, Chrome, Firefox(Minefield) 3.1 Alpha 1 and Safari 4 were put through JavaScript tests using the SunSpider suite. The PC was equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.10 GHz. Safari 4 beta gave IE 7 a sound thrashing at the test, emerging 42 times faster. The performance difference between the two were so vast that the reviewers had to prepare a seperate graph without IE 7 so there could be more resolution in the charts showing the differences between the rest of the contendors. Then again, one must take into account the fact that Chrome and Firefox (Minefield) 3.2 weren't all that behind Safari 4 beta, only a few notches. The scores are denoted by render time in terms of milliseconds. Lesser the better. The scores stand at:

• Safari 4 (Total time: 910 ms)
• Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136 ms)
• Google Chrome (1,177 ms)
• Firefox 3 (3,250 ms)
• Opera 9.6 (4,076 ms)
• Internet Explorer 8 (5,839 ms)
• Internet Explorer 7 (39,026 ms)

Mozilla added its regular incremental update to the Firefox web-browser. With this release, the group fixed many bugs found with its previous version 3.0.5, which don't necessarily translate into security flaws. As many as seven critical thru mild security vulnerabilities were fixed, that includes a crash with memory corruption issue, and extraction of data using SessionStore files. The list of security fixes addressed can be found here. The release also fixes several bugs as listed in the updated bug list. The release also improves the ability of scripted commands to work properly with plugins, one of the major bugs fixed. Fore more information, refer to the release notes page for version 3.0.6. Firefox can be downloaded from the server closest to you, from the Firefox homepage. Existing users would be updated automatically.

Firefox, Mozilla's most successful web browser based on the Gecko browser engine holds more than 20% of the web-browser market share, according to the latest figures by NetApplications placing it at 21.34%. Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have been on a roll in the past 24 months, at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) which has been falling in market-share from the 90+ percent it once held.

Mozilla's CEO John Lilly calls this as a significant milestone for Mozilla, and gives credit to the global Mozilla community. NetApplications gets into the details of how Firefox gained a market share growth of 20%, by attributing it to the relatively high number of public holidays between November and December, when users accessed internet from home. This since the significant movers were noted to be home/domestic users rather than corporate users.