Mozilla's new Firefox 13 browser may have just barely landed on users' PCs, but already forward-looking fans can check out the beta version of Firefox 14--and the Aurora version of Firefox 15, too.
Most notable in Firefox 14 are new security features that “make it easier for users to control their Web experience,” according to the official announcement late last week on the Mozilla blog.
Ahead of its official release, Mozilla has uploaded Firefox 13 FINAL to its servers, the latest version of its open-source, cross-platform web browser. Version 13 will be officially unveiled on June 5th, when it should also become available as an update to existing Firefox users.
Twitter will be implementing the Do Not Track feature in the Mozilla Firefox browser, as announced Thursday by Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission at a New York Internet Week privacy panel. Twitter confirmed the FTC's announcement, appropriately enough, in a tweet.
Carolyn Penner, a spokeswoman for Twitter, said, "We applaud the FTC’s leadership on Do Not Track, and are excited to provide the benefits of Do Not Track."
Mozilla complained Wednesday that Microsoft prohibits running any browser except Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows RT, hampering choices for users. Google said on Thursday it shares the concerns.
Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 that runs on devices using an ARM processor, restricts user choice, reduces competition and chills innovation said Harvey Anderson, Mozilla General Counsel in a blog post. By only allowing Internet Explorer to fully access advanced OS functions, "third-party browsers are effectively excluded from the platform," he said.
Despite big name tech companies -- such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle -- supporting the controversial Internet surveillance bill that passed in the House last week, Mozilla has come out against the legislation.
Mozilla's 'Boot to Gecko' operating system (OS) reportedly will go on sale later this year.
Brazilian blog Ztop reports that Mozilla will release its debut smartphone through operator Telefonica Vivo, having announced the news at a conference today in Sao Paulo.
Changes that are made to a web browser that you are using on a daily basis can have a devastating effect. We have seen this happen several times in the past when Mozilla made changes to the design of the Firefox web browser. Especially the move from Firefox 3 to 4 caused an uproar, with part of the userbase still rejecting to update to any version beyond Firefox 3.
Mozilla is currently testing a new feature that would see encrypted Google searches enabled by default for all Firefox users.
"We are currently testing the change to use SSL for built-in Google searches in our Firefox nightly channel," said Johnathan Nightingale, senior director of Firefox engineering, in an email. "If no issues are uncovered, it will move through our Aurora and Beta release channels before eventually shipping to all our Firefox users. This will include migrating the changes to our non-English version of Firefox, as well."
Mozilla has announced yesterday that it will start rolling out silent updates to Firefox beginning in June.
Robert Nyman, Mozilla technical Evangelist listed silent updates as one of the projects the company will finish this year in a blog post summarizing Mozilla's 2011's accomplishments on Wednesday.
Mozilla has released Firefox 11 despite a last-minute security issue being reported which could have delayed the release.
This is the second Firefox release of 2012 and features a number of developer updates including a WebGL visualisation tool which helps to highlight page structure and style editor which allows for work on style sheets in a text editor like environment.
