Mozilla just announced that it is about to begin supporting the H.264 video codec, a move the company has said goes against its better judgment. Mozilla suggested that it had been forced into this decision, which is patent laden, and also assured users and developers that it would continue to offer its software free of charge as it currently does.

According to a blog post by Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, "Mozilla is on the cusp of changing our policy about our use of video codecs and making use of a format known as 'H.264'. We have tried to avoid this for a number of years, as H.264 is encumbered by patents. The state of video on the web today and in mobile devices in particular is pushing us to change our policy."

Baker also added that Mozilla resisted the move to H.264 support because it wants to build products that people "love". He also added that using standards that are laden with patents is not supportive of this goal. "We've declined to adopt a technology that improves user experience in the hopes this will bring greater user sovereignty. Not many would try this strategy, but we did. It's time to shift our weighting. It's time to focus on shipping products people can love now, and to work on developing a new tactic for bringing unencumbered technology to the world of audio and video codecs."

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich posted an additional blog post covering Mozilla's decision in greater depth and also suggests that Mozilla could have avoided this transition altogether if it had support from firms like Google and Adobe. In case you missed it, both Adobe and Google started talks about supporting more open standards recently. Unfortunately both Google and Adobe had to drop those ideas due to the commonplace of H.264.

According to Eich, "Some say we should hold out longer for someone (Google? Adobe?) to change something to advance WebM over H.264. Others say we should hold out indefinitely and by ourselves, rather than integrate OS decoders for encumbered video. What I do know for certain is this: H.264 is absolutely required right now to compete on mobile. I do not believe that we can reject H.264 content in Firefox or Android or or in B2G and survive the shift to mobile. Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won't sugar-coat this pill.... Failure on mobile is too likely to consign Mozilla to decline and irrelevance."

Source: The Inquirer - Mozilla grudgingly adopts H.264
Mitchell's Blog - Video, user experience and our mission
Mozilla Hacks - Video, Mobile, and the Open Web
Engadget - Mozilla caves, will support H.264 to avoid 'irrelevance'

Just one day after it released Firefox 9, Mozilla quickly released an update after backing out of a bug fix that was causing users on Mac, Linux and Windows computers to experience browser crashes. Mozilla released Firefox 9.0.1 on Wednesday which made many people think that it was fake due to the fact that it released right behind version 9.

According to a post on the Mozilla support forum, "Seeing links for [Firefox 9.0.1], why is it being released? Or is it a hoax?" Other discussions on the support forum's threads included messages from users asking whether or not Mozilla actually updated the Firefox browser and if so, why?

Mozilla did not specify in the release notes of v9.0.1 why it needed to re-release the browser though developers did note that the update was prompted by crash reports, specifically for Mac users, though Windows and Linux users also experienced crashes. According to a statement from Alex Keybl, one of the engineering Project Managers on Mozilla's Release Team, "We built Firefox 9.0.1 with bug 708572 backed out. We've pushed Firefox 9.0.1 for all platforms. Although, we think Windows is mostly unaffected, we still decided to move forward with Windows-v9.0.1."

In order to rectify the problem, one that caused crashes whenever users ran certain add-on toolbars (like the one distributed by the Dallas Cowboys), the developers at Mozilla removed a patch that had been applied previously. The rush update that occurred on Wednesday was the second by Mozilla in the last 30 days. Mozilla shipped Firefox 8.0.1 back on November 21 to deal with a large number of crashes with Mac OS X. The crashes were eventually traced back to an Apple update of Java that occurred earlier in the month.

Anybody who upgraded to Firefox 9 in between the time of its release and the release of 9.0.1 can update to the new version by choosing "About Firefox" from the Firefox menu on the Mac or "About Firefox" from the Help menu under the Firefox button on Windows and then approving the new version's installation after it has completed downloading.

Source: Computer World - Mozilla re-releases Firefox 9, backs out fix causing crash

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I think it is safe to say that the new six week rapid release cycle for Mozilla's Firefox internet browser has drawn a lot of controversy since it was announced and put into effect. However, it seems as if Mozilla likes the negative press because it seems as if there could be more to come from this rapid release cycle.

In a recent thread noticed on a developer mailing list, anybody and everybody involved in the effort has been debating the possibility of shortening the cycle even more. These developers are considering shortening the already short six week cycle to a five week cycle or even shorter than that.

According to Mozilla Software Engineer Josh Aas, "Our transition to releasing every six weeks went really well. We're getting fixes to users much more quickly than we used to, but can we get fixes to users even faster? Moving to a five week cycle would mean a fix going into mozilla-central would get to users three weeks faster."

So shortening the short cycle that people are already complaining about sounds like a good idea? To Aas it does. "That's a big deal," Aas added. "It's an upgrade in responsiveness that we can't afford not to pass on if we can pull it off. I suspect the only way to know if we can do it is to try - we can always back off if it doesn't work out."

However, not everybody is objecting to the idea of shortening the cycle. Firefox Release Manager Christian Legnitto stated, "Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle--but it won't be soon. We have some work to do to make six weeks smooth from a process, tool and product side. When we get six weeks down to a science, we can shorten as needed."

Source: PC World - Mozilla Mulls a 5-Week Firefox Release Cycle

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Mozilla's new rapid release schedule for its Firefox internet browser, which was created as a positive thing for the company, has come under a lot of scrutiny in the past few weeks and even more fuel was added to the fire over the weekend to make things even worse.



The criticism this time came from a former volunteer for the project, Tyler Downer. Downer recently left the project after three years after becoming increasingly frustrated with what he describes as a "broken" triage process for finding and fixing bugs.



According to a blog post from Downer, "Triage as we know it today is NOT ready to handle the Rapid Release process." Under the old model, with which a new major version of the browser would be released once every year, "triage had a bit more time to go through a massive pile of bugs to find regressions and issues, and there was a pretty good chance that most bugs would get caught just because we had time on our side, and we could afford to miss a bug for six weeks, because we would most likely get around to it," Downer added.



However, Downer asserts that with the new, faster process, triage has been caught off guard. "We currently have 2,598 [unconfirmed] bugs in Firefox that haven't been touched in 150 days. That is almost 2,600 bugs that have not been touched since Firefox 4 was released. And how many more bugs have been touched but not really triaged or worked on? Every day this number grows."



Despite his comments, however, Downer did make a point to note that he wasn't criticizing the rapid release process itself. "I love the idea of rapid release. Rapid release is going to be awesome if done properly. I have always been so frustrated by the continual late releases that hold back awesome new features from the web."



In addition to that, Downer also added that he doesn't think the situation is hopeless. "I have been in talks over the past few days, and I see a good possibility that Mozilla means business in improving triage." However, when Downer decided to leave, it was due to a general lack of interest in doing anything substantial to improve the triage process.



Source: PC World - Firefox's Rapid Release Schedule Draws More Blame

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Mozilla states that it is on track to release Firefox 6 next week according to notes posted on the company's website. Developers have signed off on Firefox 6 and also anticipate no problems that could delay the release date of August 16 for the most recent upgrade to Mozilla's web browser according to meeting notes.



According to the notes, "On track with a few bugs still remaining. No concerns for Tuesday." Mozilla has used a new rapid-release schedule ever since the spring of this year. This new schedule delivers a new version of Firefox every six weeks, a move that many analysts and critics are comparing to the same one Google uses to update its Chrome browser for the last year.



Firefox 5 was released back on June 21, six weeks ago next Tuesday. Mozilla is already working on Firefox 7 and plans on releasing it on September 27. In addition to that, if the rapid-release schedule works like it is supposed to, Firefox 8 will become available on November 8 with Firefox 9 becoming available on December 20.



Firefox 6 includes multiple, noticeable changes to the browser, including highlighting domain names in the address bar. Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 do a similar thing by making domain names boldfaced. In addition to that, Firefox 6 also reduces start-up time when users rely on Panorama, the multi-tab organizer for Firefox.



Some users, however, are upset by the change of pace for Mozilla and Firefox including corporations like IBM, which have installed the open-source browser on tens of thousands of Windows PCs. However, that has not frightened Mozilla, who has not backed off of the rapid-release schedule at all. Though, in response to enterprise complaints and concerns, Mozilla has established a committee in order to take feedback from users.



As well as releasing Firefox 6 next week, Mozilla also plans on releasing Firefox 3.6.20, an update that will include security patches and other fixes to the 2010 edition retained by nearly 1 in 3 users of Firefox. When Firefox 6 ships, users running Firefox 4 or Firefox 5 will be offered the newest edition via the browser's update mechanism that is triggered when the "About Firefox" dialog is opened.



As of the end of July, only 11% of Firefox users were still running Firefox 4 and 48% were running Firefox 5. What do you think? Are you excited about the release of Firefox 6? What are your thoughts on Mozilla's new rapid-release schedule? Let me know in the comments section below.



Source: Computer World - Mozilla on track to ship Firefox 6 next week

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Things between Firefox and Google have taken a turn for the awkward. Since its inception, Mozilla has always received a lot of funding from the search giant. However, analysts have been expecting Google to drop out of that role ever since the company launched its very own web browser, Google Chrome. Ever since Chrome was released and those analysts made their predictions, they have all been sorely disappointed, until now.

Google has just announced that the company will no longer include support for new versions of Firefox with its Google Toolbar. Many analysts' predictions have finally come true though this may spark another prediction, one that announcse that a new browser war has just been started.

However, that seems highly unlikely. The main reason Google is dropping support is due to the fact that Firefox already offers a lot of the benefits that the Google Toolbar offers, whether it be natively or through the immense amount of add-ons that Firefox offers.

Google is being very courteous about the dropping of support. The company will continue to offer Google Toolbar for older versions of Firefox and even created a webpage that was designed to help former users of Google Toolbar find similar functions in Firefox 5 and later versions yet to come. The Google Toolbar Blog has the full announcement if you are interested.

What do you think? Are you upset about Google dropping Google Toolbar support on later versions of Firefox? Or does the browser have enough of its own features to fill the gap? If you really can't live without the Google Toolbar, you can always switch to Google Chrome. It works well enough for me to work on every day.

Source: MaximumPC - Google Dumps Toolbar Support For Firefox

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