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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4 beta now available 3.6 coming

sr-firefox3.jpg
From the 'Browser Beta' files:

Next week will be a big week of Mozilla with two releases. One showing the present, the other - the future.

Firefox 3.5.4 is now available for beta testers and it fixes a number of stability issues as well as an as-yet unreported number of security vulnerabilities. Mozilla's practice (and it's a good one) is not to post its security advisories for the beta builds, but rather not until the release is considered to be generally available.

It's a bit annoying from my own journalist point of view, but it does make sense especially if the security vulnerabilities are not being exploited (yet).

After all, why would anyone want to post a fully public advisory about a security issue that hasn't properly been fixed/tested yet? That's not a good security practice.

There will also be fixed (probably a few of the same) in Firefox 3.x wit the 3.0.15 release. Both the 3.5.4 and 3.0.15 releases are currently scheduled for Oct 21st.

Also on October 21st will be the first public beta of Firefox 3.6 codenamed Namoroka. That's right, contrary to other reports, Firefox 3.6 beta is not officially available (yet). There is a test build (in the nightlies directory), but there usually is a difference between the test builds and what ends up being the publicly available beta. So my advice is to wait for the 'real' beta.

Firefox 3.6 is a big release even though it is only being given a minor point number.

No it's not a major interface or rendering engine change, but it will introduce a myriad of interesting little features that users will notice.

There is additional CSS support, preliminary support for machine orientation, integrated Mozilla Labs Personas and oh yeah it also promises to be faster.

As far as I can tell, Mozilla has however left out at least two key features that I personally was really looking forward to seeing in Firefox 3.6. The Taskfox (Ubiquity) command interface doesn't look like it will be in the final beta. As well the Jetpack extension technology isn't likely to be there either. Both of those technologies are interesting and represent very different approaches to browser technology.

Neither Ubuiquity nor Jetpack will grow in adoption at the rate they should without mainline Firefox browser integration, in my opinion. Sure users can just add-on themselves, but having the technologies directly integrated is a better path.

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