Just Released

• Firefox 3.5. 5 – November 6th

Schedule this Coming Week

• None

Future Release

• Firefox 3.0.16 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.5.6 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.6 – Year-End 2009
• Firefox 3.7 – Spring 2010

Firefox 3.5.5 was released today and addressed several stability bugs that may lead to crashing in very specific cases like sites that use a GIF image as their favicon. See complete Release Notes for full details.

Auto-updates should be occurring in the next 24-48 hours, otherwise users may get the latest update by going to Help menu and selecting Check For Updates. Also, a reminder from Mozilla Developer Network, If you’re still using Firefox 3.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3.5 by downloading Firefox 3.5.5 from www.firefox.com.

Source: Mozilla Links

Note: Some release and scheduling changes were announced in today’s Weekly Status Meeting

Schedule this Week

• Firefox 3.5.5 – November 6th

Future Release

• Firefox 3.0.16 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.5.6 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.6 RC1 – Late November 2009
• Firefox 3.6 – Mid December 2009
• Firefox 3.7 – Spring 2010

NOTE: The US and many other countries ended Daylight Savings Time early Sunday morning and returned to Standard Time. So now the Update meeting with be at 19:00 UTC (the “new” 11am PST) Monday.

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• Thanks for coming to last week’s meetup, about 40 people showed up and a good time was had by all
• Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 was launched last week along with the new Add-on Compatibility Reporter
  • 3600 active users
  • 363 reports of incompatible add-ons, 857 reports of compatible ones
  • Currently about 54% of usage is compatible with some version of Fx 3.6 but only 39% are marked as compatible with 3.6b1 and above.

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.15 / Firefox 3.5.4
  • shipped last Tuesday!
  • 3.5.4 stability issues caught after push…

• Firefox 3.5.5

  • scheduling a short-cycle release
  • developers jumped on creating fixes and had them ready by Friday evening (yay!)
  • hoping to start builds today or tomorrow

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.6
  • code freeze is November 10 at 11:59pm
  • please work on your blockers
  • targeting mid-December release

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)
  • Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 shipped on Friday, check out the plea for feedback or release notes.
  • Nightly and beta users are encouraged to help us by reporting add-on compatibility
  • zpao’s “session restore optimization” patch landed on trunk, should be moving to branch shortly
  • main development focus is on Firefox 3.6 Blockers
  • last week at the development and delivery meetings we decided to issue frequent updates to Firefox 3.6 Beta users on that update channel; aiming for the first update to be this week with:
    • DLL component directory lockdown and blacklisting patch (see bug 524904 and bug 519357
    • syntax changes for CSS gradients
  • some questions were raised about the schedule for Firefox 3.6:
    • code freeze for RC is targeted at November 18th
    • RC release estimated for late November
    • final release estimated for early-to-mid December
• Firefox 3.7

  • No Report

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • Fun times in CrashKill meetings:
    • dbaron has a patch in bug 521750 that will potentially fix 5-15% of crashes due to thread badness + cycle collector. This is going into release as soon as possible.
    • Other crash patches, from newer bugs: Font crash on startup: bug 524462, and a gif encoder crash: bug 525326
    • Will be talking about metrics and tools in today’s meeting, along with individual bugs.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 4
    • P2: 83
    • P3: 1
    • Other: 9
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 12
    • Content: 20
    • GFX: 10
    • JS: 19

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • 3.0rc1 still has 22 blockers
  • RC1 build tomorrow seems unlikely; more news on tomorrow’s Tb3 call

 

Complete Meeting Notes

There has been some revisions to the Speedup Firefox 3.5 Startup article. Inifox no longer seems to exist and the application was only in Spanish. This application would vacuum the Firefox databases. A big thanks to Gareon at Go Firefox! I have found there is now an add-on which will vacuum your place.sqlite database for you and from within Firefox. More information can be found on our Wiki: Speedup Firefox Startup.

While I did download the Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 release last night, I have finally got around to getting it installed. My system has been a bit problematic for the better part of the day. I also was having some issues with FEBE as well, but those seemed to be related to my profile which I had carried over from Firefox…well I have no idea what Firefox version I started this profile with. I’ve got all my add-ons, passwords, bookmarks and a couple other (except I don’t think my about:config settings carry) items backed up ready to import. So with the first run of Firefox 3.6b1 I was presented with this splash/welcome page:

Now a couple things I discovered as well on this first run. Persona is already built-in so all you need to do is follow the link and pick what you want your Firefox wants to wear. I say built-in as it is not an installed add-on. However I discovered a couple surprising things when I went to the add-ons manager, Google Gears was already installed (though not compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta 1). However, I was shocked to discover the Microsoft .Net Framework Assistant add-on was pending install (after restart). WTF! It is already installed as version 0.0.0! First off I thought Mozilla had block that add-on and further is a clean install of Firefox with a new profile. I canceled the pending install and disabled the one that is installed.

Just Released

• Firefox 3.0.15 – October 27th
• Firefox 3.5.4 – October 27th
• Firefox 3.6b1 – October 30th

Schedule this Coming Week

• None

Future Release

• Firefox 3.0.16 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.5.5 – December 15th
• Firefox 3.6 – Year-End 2009
• Firefox 3.7 – Spring 2010

As mentioned last week on the Changes Coming to Our Main Site post, we’ve been upgrading our existing site. We are please to announce the first two sections of The Firefox Extension Guru’s Wiki are now live! So far the Tips & Tricks section of the main site has been migrated over to the Wiki. Also, most of the tweaks have been migrated over as well. Yes, most of the tweaks. This was because there were a few tweaks that really only applied to the early builds of Firefox 2. Most of the fixes provided by those tweaks were implemented by Mozilla in the final releases of Firefox 2 and have carried over into Firefox 3.0, 3.5 and the upcoming 3.6 releases.

The final migration is going to be the extensions section. Still evaluating the best way to migrate this section over. This is going to be a long and tedious process as that section needs a lot cleaning up before it can be moved on the Wiki. At this time the best estimate is going to be mid-November.

You can access the Wiki from the link below the logo in the upper right coroner of the blog or via the Wiki link from the main site.

After many delays Firefox 3.6b1 has been released today! This beta version of the next version of Firefox is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users.

This first revision of the Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features:

• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Please use the following links to download Firefox 3.6 Beta, or visit the beta download page:

• Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 Setup.exe
• Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 1.dmg
• Linux: firefox-3.6b1.tar.bz2

Source:Mozilla Developers News

Tuesday we saw the releases of Firefox 3.0.15 and Firefox 3.5.4. On Wednesday Firefox 3.6b1 was suppose to be released, at least that was what the new date was after last week’s delay. Wednesday has come and gone and no Firefox 3.6b1. The latest date on the release site shows Late October. Well that narrows it down to either today (29th) or tomorrow (30th). But, I am going to go out on a limb and say sometime in November…

Firefox 3.5.4 was released on October 27th. This release addresses Several security issues and fixed several stability issues. See complete Release Notes for full details.

Auto-updates should be occurring in the next 24-48 hours, otherwise users may get the latest update by going to Help menu and selecting Check For Updates. Also, a reminder from Mozilla Developer Network, If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3.5 by downloading Firefox 3.5.4 from www.firefox.com.

Mozilla has released the 15th stability and security update for the Firefox 3 browser.


For more information about What’s New in Firefox 3.0.15, check out the Firefox 3.0.15 Release Notes. Current Firefox 3 users may obtain Firefox 3.0.15 manually via the Check for Updates… option from the Help menu. Automatic upgrade (for those who have this feature enabled) should occur within the next 24-48 hours. Alternatively, users may also download Firefox 3.0.15 directly via getfirefox.com

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• AMO 5.2 launched last Tuesday with support for Personas and new statistics for developers
• Kicking off Firefox 3.6 compatibility efforts. Currently at 36%
• Add-on Compatibility Reporter was announced last week
• Add-ons Meetup at 7pm tomorrow night in Mountain View, RSVP!

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.15 / Firefox 3.5.4
  • on track for shipping tomorrow (yay)

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.5
  • proposed schedules available on the wiki
  • mid-December release date… yeah.
  • changing our beta period structure to push the release to beta channel earlier

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)
  • Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 scheduled to be released Wednesday, October 28
  • nightly and beta users are encouraged to help us by reporting add-on compatibility
  • Paul and others will be landing a change which should speed up session restore for users with many windows and tabs
  • we’d like as many people as possible to test recent nightlies and the upcoming beta with Windows 7; there’s some concern about how well the implementation of Aero Peek tab previews are working (see bug 474056 and dependencies)
  • there’s an ongoing discussion about how we plan on updating Firefox 3.5 users to Firefox 3.6 when it’s ready for release
• Firefox 3.7
  • Stephen Horlander continues to QB discussions about changes to the Firefox 3.7 theme on the wiki and his blog
  • Alex Faaborg and the UX team are looking at how to simplify our Preferences panels
  • Jennifer Boriss, Dave Townsend and Nick Nguyen are looking at updating the Add-on manager and Extensions API to be more flexible
  • we’re also starting to think about how to phase in process separation in Firefox 3.7 and 4.0

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • In our CrashKill meetings we are still digging through top crashers and reaching out to vendors. We still need contacts for vendors who produce top crashing add-ons. If you have contacts at one of these that you can share, please comment in the bug. Also, if you want to keep the contact info confidential, you can mark your comment as private as well.
  • Thanks to BitDefender who is pushing out fixes to their toolbar in response to our outreach. It’s still early, but we’re watching crash reports to make sure we see those crash numbers drop.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 2
    • P2: 105
    • P3: 0
    • Other: 6
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 20
    • Content: 21
    • GFX: 10
    • JS: 24
  • SpiderMonkey Happenings
    • Continuous Perf Improvements
    • ES5 coming together well
    • Most blockers seem to be well understood

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • No Report

Complete Meeting Notes

With Persona being integrated into the upcoming Firefox 3.6, there is now a dedicated section on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) for Personas.  Users can also still visit GetPersonas.com as well to view the current (and always growing) selection of Personas.

Source: Mozilla Links