While everyone is waiting for Firefox 3.5 (previously 3.1) to be finished, Mozilla releases a new version of 3.0 earlier then expected.

With good reasons by the way. Although Firefox 3.0.8 was planned to be released at a later time, they were forced to release it earlier. Instead 3.0.8 as planned will become 3.0.9, meaning the current 3.0.8 is similar to 3.0.7 with two security fixes. These two security fixes are marked as critical and relate to: arbitrary code execution through XUL element and XSL Transformation vulnerability.

If you're using Firefox an automatic update notice will appear (or you can select Help > Check for Updates...). You can download the stand-alone installer from Mozilla's web site.

Mozilla has released the third beta of Firefox 3.1, patiently polishing the biggest competitor to the world's most used browser.

The changes is this beta aren't huge compared with the previous one as all focus is on stabilizing the release, of which most importantly is the faster JavaScript engine TraceMonkey. Compared with Firefox 3.0 this release includes: private browsing mode, web worker thread support, native JSON support, improvements to the Gecko layout engine (including speculative parsing for faster content rendering), support for new web technologies.

For those who haven't toyed with Firefox 3.1 yet, be sure to note that it might break some add-ons. You can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 here, but don't forget to read the release notes before using this release. If you're wondering why this release isn't called Firefox 3.5 yet, that's because it will be re-branded starting from beta 4 (the last beta).

The seventh maintainance releae of the popular Firefox 3 browser has been released. Bringing fixes for several security exploits, improve stability and more.

As expected with this release several security exploits were plugged. Three are in the category of critical and concern: an upgraded PNG library to fix memory safety hazards, XUL linked clones fix to avoid crashes, and evidence of memory corruption leading to crashes. One high severity exists related to XML data theft via RDFXMLDataSource and cross-domain redirect, while one low severity concerns URL spoofing with invisible control characters.

Other fixes include stability, accessibility and more. This new release is a recommended update for Firefox 3 users, and can be obtained either automatically (when Firefox notifies you), through Help -> Check for Updates... or by downloading the full installer from Mozilla's web site.

The good folks at Mozilla have released a new maintenance release of Firefox, bringing it up to 3.0.6. Although not the most exciting release, for this we have to wait till 3.1, it does contain important changes worth updating.

Most importantly are the security fixes that also appear in this release, of which one has a critical state and two high impact. The areas these fixes concern are: crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.6), XMLHttpRequest allows reading HTTPOnly cookies, Chrome privilege escalation via local .desktop files, XSS using a chrome XBL method and window.eval andl ocal file stealing with SessionStore, and directives to not cache pages ignored.

Other fixes in this release concern stability, problems with rendering of Firefox itself after long up times, improved abilities for scripting commands regarding access to plug-ins and more.

You can update your Firefox, if it hasn't asked already, by clicking Help -> Check for Updates and following the instructions. Of course you can also retrieve the full download from Mozilla's site.

News has spread a few days ago that the European Commission has finished the investigation, started by Opera Software, that Microsoft is illegally bundling their web browser with Windows. How will this affect you? It won't, ha!

It looks like history will repeat itself, although it mostly feels like a déjà vu. Didn't we had this illegal bundling issue before? We sure had, concerning web browsers in the US and concerning media players in the EU.

So what will happen if the European Commission tells Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer? Basically nothing. Let's be honest, IE is tied into Windows with a purpose these days, to use its rendering engine (and associated technologies). Not just IE shells, but also stuff like Blizzard's WoW launcher, Windows Help, etc. These days it has purpose and it's unlikely it will get removed from Windows completely.

What we might see is the following ideal (?) solution: Windows 7 N hides IE, and has no Windows Media Player. After first boot up (of a clean system), Windows will display a screen similar to the anti-virus (security) screen, stating that no web browser is bundled, but alternatives 1-5 are available. Of course those alternatives need to supply a streamlines download for the user so Microsoft can retrieve it and install it silently. For the user the default web browser is the one downloaded, but all programs that use an embedded version of IE still have access to it.

If this solution would materialize it would fail, similar to the current Windows N releases. Are you going to pay the same amount of money for an operating system that doesn't have your most used media player and web browser? Of course no average Joe or Jane will! Even worse, most manufacturers will make this decision for you. Why? Because you expect a complete package with your PC and don't want the hassle to download additional software. And the manufacturer doesn't want to spend additional funds on supporting some alternative browser. The less you call for support, the better.

Finally we should question ourselves the following: why doesn't this apply to Apple, which comes bundled with Safari, isn't that almost as "bad"? With IE8 going for standards compliant support, is the whole notion of manipulating open standards also gone? And why, o why was this filed only in December 2007, when Firefox showed the world that it is possible to fight and win?

Mozilla released the fifth maintenance and security release of their popular Firefox web browser. As with all security releases, this one is recommended for all users, and will be downloaded automatically if you already have a previous version installed.

The core of this release is addressing several security issues, of which 3 are deemed critical, 1 high, 1 moderate and 3 low. The critical and high issues are related to: XSS vulnerabilities in SessionStore, XSS and JavaScript privilege escalation, Crashes with evidence of memory corruption, and Cross-domain data theft via script redirect error message.

Other changes include support for the Bengali, Esperanto, Galician, Hindi, and Latvian languages; multiple accessibility fixes; a fix related to multiple signed XPI installations; and more.

You can manually download the release from Mozilla's web site, or force an update using Help -> Check for Updates...

Everybody loves robots, especially those from Japan (Gundam!). Credits go to Mozilla Links for pointing out to Hiroshi Shimoda's artwork, which is a revision of the Firefox 3.1 robot.