Firefox 3.6 likely the last for PowerPC Macs

The current version of Firefox will likely be the end of the road for people using PowerPC Macs.

A final decision will be based on usage data that's better than what Mozilla possesses right now, but technical difficulties raised by Firefox 4 improvements mean at a minimum that it's a strong possibility only Intel-based Macs will be able to run the new browser.

"I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC [PowerPC] for Firefox 4," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, in a mailing list posting on Tuesday.

Major changes are a fact of life in the computing industry, but it's never easy to decide when users of older technology should no longer be supported. Keeping new software compatible with old hardware--and conversely, making sure new hardware can run old software--can be an expensive proposition when there are few users of the older technology left.

But Mozilla's Firefox now is used by hundreds of millions of people, and even a small fraction of them can be a large number in absolute terms. It's a plight of widely used software; for comparison, Microsoft has extended the lifespan of Windows XP several times beyond its original plans.

Dropping support for older machines, of course, can make those with the machines angry. Mozilla faced disgruntlement when it decided to cut off Firefox support for Mac OS X 10.4 after version 3.6. Using an old browser also exposes people to security risks, though Mozilla maintains older Firefox incarnations for a time after new versions supplant them.

The writing has been on the wall for PowerPC Macs for more than five years. Apple announced in June 2005 it would move to Intel processors instead of the PowerPC models built by IBM and Motorola. The two processor families use different instruction sets, so programs written for one don't run on the other without significant work.

Why phase out support?
Beltzner pointed to two new features that make Firefox 4 on PowerPC difficult. First is out-of-process plug-ins, which moves software such as Adobe Systems' Flash Player to a separate memory region to protect the main browser from crashes. This feature arrived in Firefox 3.6 for Windows, but for Macs is coming with Firefox 4.

Second is the just-in-time compiler for Web-based JavaScript programs. Faster JavaScript is a key area in the browser market competition right now, since it speeds up many complex Web sites and helps Web developers build more complicated user interfaces. Firefox is pulling in technology used in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, rival browsers based on the WebKit browser project, to help speed JavaScript.

"I believe that Firefox 4 should be relatively faster and superior to previous versions--so to be better than Firefox 3.6. Two of the significant mechanisms for performance improvement will not be available for PPC based computers, and so we are not planning on extending Firefox 4 support to those architectures," Beltzner said in another mailing list message.

It's possible a version of Firefox for PowerPC could be built without those features, he added--but it probably wouldn't be called "Firefox." "I suspect that we won't brand any of those builds as 'Firefox' though, but that would be a discussion with whomever wishes to publish those builds, as usual," he said. "Our goal is to deliver a consistent Firefox experience across platforms."

Beta schedule slip
Plans are changing for building the next test versions of Firefox.

Mozilla released Firefox 4 beta 4 Tuesday and had hoped to "freeze" the code base for beta 5 this Friday, a step that locks most development out as a new version of the software is built. This fifth beta had been planned as a significant milestone: the first test version to have all the Firefox 4 features built in, if not fully tested.

However, Mozilla is having trouble meeting that goal.

In meeting notes published Tuesday, Belzner proposed making the sixth beta the last to get new features. The target date for the beta 6 code freeze is September 10.

Mozilla is assessing the priorities for that release. Priorities include performance, a better user interface that could help attract people to upgrade, and the new Jetpack extensions framework that could make it easier to upgrade Firefox without forcing add-on programmers to rebuild their software.

And one important Web technology development looks like it won't be ready in time for Firefox 4: IndexedDB, which builds database abilities into the browser so that Web applications can work offline, among other things. "IndexedDB unlikely to be included (spec is changing rapidly, security implications to be resolved," Mozilla said in notes for a weekly meeting.

Another development, the WebSocket interface, is "likely to be included, but only as...experimental," the planning notes said. The WebSocket interface opens up a communication channel between the browser and a server, making it easier to build a Web site or application that's continuously updated.

Browser security features compared

Internet Explorer 8 , Firefox 3 , Google Chrome 4, Apple's Safari 4, and Opera 10
include features that block sites known to host malware and malicious downloads. All but Opera also let you browse without leaving any tracks. But just as important as these protections is ensuring that whichever browser you use is thoroughly patched.

Filtering out bad sites

Firefox's built-in antiphishing tool claims to update its bad-site database 48 times a day, according to Mozilla's Firefox security page. Firefox 3 uses Google's Safe Browsing service to automatically block sites that are known to host malware. The Google Code site describes how Safe Browsing works in Firefox.

To verify that attack-site blocking is enabled in Firefox, click Tools > Options > Security and make sure "Block reported attack sites" is checked.

Firefox will prevent known-bad sites from opening when "Block reported attack sites" is checked.

(Credit:
Mozilla Foundation)

The same feature is built into Google's own Chrome browser. You can ensure that malware-site filtering is on in Chrome by clicking the wrench icon in the top-right corner, choosing Options, and selecting Under the Hood. "Enable phishing and malware filtering" should be checked. The Google Chrome Help site describes the feature. (Hint: This page looks very similar to the description on the Google Code site.)

Google's Chrome browser blocks known-bad sites when "Enable phishing and malware protection" is checked.

(Credit:
Google)

The SmartScreen technology in version 8 of Internet Explorer blocks known-malicious downloads as well as bad URLs. Other new security features in
IE 8 include automatic blocking of click-jacking and cross-site scripting attacks, automatic crash recovery, and highlighting of the actual domain name in the address bar. The Microsoft Security site describes the SmartScreen Filter and includes links to a SmartScreen FAQ and information for site managers.

Apple's Safari browser added phishing and malware blocking in version 3.2, which was released in late 2008; read about this and other security features in Safari 4 on the Apple Safari site. Likewise, Opera's Fraud Protection predates the phishing and malware filters in IE and Firefox and is enhanced in the latest version 10. But attack-site blocking is only one of Opera's many security features, which you can read about on the Opera site.

Browsing in private

To activate private browsing in Firefox 3, click Tools > Start Private Browsing, or simply press Ctrl-Shift-P. You can set Firefox to start in private-browsing mode by clicking Tools > Options > Privacy and check "Automatically start Firefox in a private browsing session." The Mozilla support site provides more information about this feature. Likewise, put IE 8 in private-browsing mode by clicking Safety > InPrivate Browsing, or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-P. You can also open a new tab and click either Browse with InPrivate or Open an InPrivate Window.

IE 8 also lets you control the information about your browsing habits that's shared with Web tracking services. To activate this feature, click Tools > InPrivate Filtering Settings and choose "Let me choose which providers receive my information." This opens the InPrivate Filtering settings dialog, where you can turn filtering off, choose which services to block from tracking you, or automatically block all trackers.

Internet Explorer 8's InPrivate Filtering lets you block some or all Web tracking services.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

You can open an incognito window in Google Chrome by clicking the wrench icon in the top-right corner and choosing "New incognito window," or simply press Ctrl-Shift-N. The incognito icon (a shadow figure in a fedora and glasses) appears in the top-left corner of the browser window. The Chrome support site offers a more detailed description of this feature.

Opera lacks an equivalent private-browsing capability but does offer private searching and other identity-blocking features, as described on the Opera site. To activate private browsing in Safari, simply click Safari Settings Menu > Private Browsing.

Automatic and not-so-automatic browser updates

Patching is a way of life with nearly all software, but especially with browsers and the media players associated with them: Adobe Reader, the Flash Player, Apple's QuickTime, and Sun's Java, among others. All of a browser's security features can be rendered useless by a piece of malware that takes advantage of an unpatched hole in the program.

Firefox 3 alerts users to the presence of an update and now also notifies you when your Flash Player is out-of-date. Internet Explorer 8 updates via the Windows Update/Microsoft Update services. Google Chrome made a splash by being the first browser to update itself in the background without requiring any prompting from users. Safari updates automatically via Apple's update service, which also serves up patches automatically for QuickTime, iTunes, and other Apple software. Opera also notifies you automatically when a new version is available.

But updating is too important to leave to others. Back in April, I described Secunia's Online Software Inspector and downloadable Personal Software Inspector, which identify out-of-date programs on your PC. The programs mentioned in that post have all been updated since, but Secunia's services should point you to the most recent versions.

New Firefox 3.6 beta aims to cut crashes

Mozilla released a third beta of
Firefox 3.6 on Wednesday, adding stability and performance features, and said it hopes to lock down the code soon for its first release candidate.

The new beta, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, includes a component directory lockdown that makes it harder for other software to meddle with the open-source browser's state by preventing that software from sidling into the same folder as the browser's own components. The result should be fewer crashes, said Mozilla's Johnathan Nightingale in a blog post, and Firefox still is open to third-party extensions via its official add-on mechanism.

The change should improve security, too, added another Mozilla programmer, Vladimir Vukecevic, who wrote in his own blog post that Mozilla is considering bringing the change to Firefox 3.5, too.

"Creating binary components to interface with the operating system or with other applications is fairly straightforward, though ultimately dangerous. Binary components have full access to the application and OS, and so can impact stability, security, and performance," Vukecevic said.

Also in the latest beta of 3.6 is a feature that lets the browser run some Web-based JavaScript programs asynchronously, which is to say without being so picky about the order the scripts run. This can improve the speed that Web pages load, Mozilla said.

The biggest Firefox 3.6 feature most folks will notice is Personas, the reskinning add-on that's now being built in. More than 10 million Personas have been downloaded so far, Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez of the Personas team said Wednesday.

Mozilla is working to release a final version of Firefox 3.6 before the end of the year, and one sign the project is wrapping up is that the developers are locking down the features and changes that can be added into the release candidate 1. Code freeze for RC1 is scheduled for Wednesday but might be at risk, a Mozilla planning site said this week.

Firefox is steadily gaining in use. Last week, Web traffic monitoring firm Net Applications announced Firefox cleared 25 percent share of those using browsers worldwide--not dethroning Internet Explorer by any means but still winning over new users. Mozilla estimates there are more than 300 million Firefox users total, and this week said there are more than 300,000 testers using the Firefox 3.6 beta

Google's Chrome, meanwhile, is appealing to some of the same browser enthusiasts who were Firefox's first users. One of its big selling points is speed, and Google is working on other ways to make the Web faster, too. Chrome gives it a vehicle to test such ideas out in the real world, a strategy that Apple, Opera, and Firefox have employed to advance the Web state of the art.

One Mozilla programmer, Alexander Limi, revealed a speedup technology called Resource Package for Mozilla, too, on Tuesday. His proposal calls for bundling many Web page elements up into a single compressed file that can be retrieved in a single Web-page request action. Browsers are limited in the number of such actions they can take in parallel, so consolidating the interactions can make pages load faster. The approach is backwards compatible with existing browsers that don't support the feature, he added.

"If the feedback is good we're likely to try and get this implemented for Firefox 3.7," said Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard in a blog post Tuesday.

Paint.NET 3.5 earns Windows 7, stability fixes

Far more robust than Microsoft Paint, but nowhere near as loaded with features as Photoshop, Paint.NET occupies a niche perfect for users who want a free image editor that has more than resizing and inverting. Version 3.5 includes an enormous number of stability tweaks and menu adjustments, as well as a couple of new minor features and some Windows 7 love, too.

One of the biggest changes makes the program's installation far less obvious. The new version automatically downloads and installs the program's prerequisites, including the latest Microsoft .Net version and Windows Installer. It will update in the background now, too, so that you can continue to use the program until it's ready to restart. Longtime users should notice that the program starts up about 20 percent faster, according to the publisher.

The program has been visually tweaked to look better on Aero for both Vista and Windows 7. Mostly, this means that the menu bar appears offset from the Aero pane border, and it looks good. The Selection tool will no longer use the "dancing ants" that most other image editors use. Instead, a context-sensitive gray overlay appears as you make your selection. This works fine when using the lasso tool, but was hard to discern when used with the magic wand. According to the publisher, this change was made to reduce CPU consumption. There are three new effects, as well, for Surface blurs, Dents, and Crystalize.

The new Utilities option on the menu bar now hosts the Language submenu, Manage Fonts, which loads the Windows font control panel, and the manual Check for Updates tool. The full list of program changes can be found here.

Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks

Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser has gained 30 million users over the past eight weeks, as it continues to gain on Internet Explorer.

Chief executive John Lilly revealed the increase in user adoption in a Twitter post on Monday, and Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, confirmed it to SoftsBay on Tuesday.

"We've seen a significant increase in the number of users for Firefox," said Nitot. "Firefox checks for new versions every 24 hours, when it's running, and when it checks, it pings the Mozilla server. We count the number of pings."

Nitot explained that counting the requests gives Mozilla the number of active daily users. To calculate the number of monthly users, the organisation multiplies the number of active daily users by three, to adjust for days when people are not browsing.

Over the past eight weeks, Mozilla has seen an average increase of 10 million daily users, from approximately 103 million to 113 million. That translates to a total of approximately 330 million monthly users .

"It's amazing to have 330 million users," said Nitot. "That's the size of the population of the USA."

In terms of global rankings, Firefox has steadily gained market share since its launch, while the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, has gradually lost user numbers.

According to US-based web-analytics company Net Applications, Internet Explorer held 65 percent of browser market share worldwide at the end of September this year, a drop from 70 percent in November 2008. By contrast, Firefox gained almost three percent, rising from 21.21 percent share to 23.75 percent.

Firefox usually sees a seasonal jump in user numbers in the autumn, according to Nitot, who added that people going back to work after northern hemisphere summer breaks could be contributing to the tally.

"Usually it's a mixture of back-to-school, and people getting new computers and installing the latest version," said Nitot. "This boosts our numbers every year."

In 17 countries in Europe, Firefox is now the dominant browser, he said, and the browser is particularly popular in Eastern Europe. Polish web-analytics company Gemius Ramking puts Firefox consistently at the top of its browser rankings chart for the region. For example, Firefox has over 48 percent of market share in Poland.

In addition, the mass adoption of information technology over the past four years in Eastern Europe has helped uptake of Firefox, Nitot said. "Internet adoption came while Firefox was becoming popular," said Nitot. "In Eastern Europe, they were not used to Internet Explorer 6. There was not the muscle memory of clicking on the blue E."

However, Nitot added that Firefox was also popular in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, as people there place an emphasis on privacy. In Europe in general, the ethos and enthusiasm of the local Firefox development communities tends to encourage new users, he said.

Fences 1.0 reins in desktop clutter--photos

The secret to a perfect desktop? Fences

When you look at your Windows desktop, what do you see? A neat and tidy display with a few judiciously picked icons, or a meaningless morass of files, folders, ancient pictures, and Web links that were dumped without logic and continue to steadily march across your computer screen? Stop me if this sounds familiar. Stop me again if the thought has crossed your mind to clean house on a dozen occasions in the last few years, but the prospect of sifting through the refuse has deterred you every time.

Happily, a pretty darn good solution is at hand. It's easy, it's elegant, it's free, and best of all, it works, if only you can bring yourself to use it. Fences 1.0 (for XP, Vista, and Windows 7) is a freeware gem that simply creates silos on your desktop, like the box tool in a drawing program, in which you group together icons. You pick the theme--like Downloads, Programs, and Documents--and the shortcuts that go in them. It's even faster if you choose from a number of suggested layouts when you install Fences for the first time, and let the app sort it out. Any placement you don't like, you can change later on.

Corralling together shortcuts instantly opens up the desktop by giving icons some breathing room and organization. It's the desktop equivalent of The Container Store. And no, it wasn't created by Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey, or the plucky Extreme Makeover: Home Edition team. Fences, which hopped out of beta on Tuesday and is available today exclusively from Softsbay.com, comes to us from Stardock, a publisher known for making fancy Windows desktop enhancements--some free, some premium.

Most everything you do in Fences can be controlled through the right-click context menu and the Fences' customizations interface. With the cursor over the fence, right-click to rename, edit, or delete. Right-click on some empty space and drag the cursor to start creating a new fence. Click and drag to move a fence around, or to reshape it. You can also drag and drop the contents from one fence into another, or from a fence to the desktop and back. If you overload a fence, forget about expanding it. Just take advantage of the scroll bar that shows up only when you mouse over the box.

Here's a favorite feature in Fences: temporarily hiding all the fences, and the icons within them, by double-clicking the desktop. Double-clicking again makes them reappear. There's another useful feature that keeps the desktop icons or fences you selected visible even as you hide the others. We've found both features to be handy in the office and at home--business professionals might want to clear all but one fence on a laptop screen before giving a presentation, for example.

Fences 1.0 reins in desktop clutter--photos

Being able to restore the screen to a previous configuration is another beneficial feature. Fences can take a snapshot of the screen's current layout, which you can revert back to. Activating a snapshot won't add or delete icons; it only alters the layout of the fences themselves.

As good as Fences is, there are still some minor changes we'd make. We'd streamline the fence-creation process down from three steps to two. We'd also like to set rules to automatically file downloads, documents, and other items into the appropriate fence. These features may be planned for a premium version that Stardock plans to release in a month or so. In the meantime, Fences 1.0 remains an unfussy piece of practical freeware that should improve almost anyone's desktop experience.