Mozilla Corp. will fix just 20% of the bugs now in Firefox 3.0 before the final version is released next year, the open-source developer's Web site revealed Wednesday. As Mozilla pushes to post Beta 1 of Firefox 3.0 in time, it has asked developers to prioritize already-identified bugs so that the most important can be fixed. That means 80% of the approximately 700 bugs currently marked as "blockers" will not be fixed for Firefox 3. Firefox 3.0 is months behind the schedule Mozilla set about midyear, when it said the browser would reach Beta 1 in late July and move into a second beta in September, both preceding a final release by the end of the year.

An update to Mozilla's popular Firefox browser has been released, taking the version number to 2.0.0.9. A number of bugs identified in the 2.0.0.8 build of the software have been corrected, as listed below:

• Bug 400406 - Firefox will ignore the "clear" CSS property when used beneath a box that is using the "float" property.
• Bug 400467 - Windows Vista users will get "Java not found" or "Java not working" errors when trying to load Java applets after updating.
• Bug 396695 - Add-ons are disabled after updating.
• Bug 400421 - Removing a single area element from an image map will cause the entire map to disappear.
• Bug 400735 - Some Windows users may experience crashes at startup. There is no workaround available at this time.

You may be notified of the update automatically, but if not you can either download it from here or click on Check for Updates... from the Help menu.

All Firefox users can now download the latest 2.0.0.8 release of the popular web browser from Mozilla.

DOWNLOAD | Release Notes

New version 2.0.0.7 of Firefox was released this afternoon to patch the QuickTime issue described here. This will protect Firefox users from the public critical security vulnerability until a patch is available from Apple.

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Less than two years after it crossed the 100 million mark, total downloads of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser have now passed 400 million, although the number does not represent total installations. Since the release of Firefox 2 last October, the browser has continued to take market share from IE. Mozilla is now working on version 3 of Firefox, which is currently in its alpha stages of development. According to the company, Firefox usage in Slovenia is nearing 50 percent market share, which would put it over Internet Explorer for the first time anywhere in the world.

While Mozilla's Firefox continues to make massive marketshare gains and is arguably the best web browser currently the Thunderbird email client hasn't received the same love and attention. Thus the future of the software has come up for debate by Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker in his latest blog post in which he admits

We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.

Mozilla just released the latest version of their oustanding internet browser. More specifically in version 2.0.0.5 Mozilla has corrected the following bugs.

• XPCNativeWrapper pollution
• Unauthorized access to wyciwyg:// documents
• Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer
• File type confusion due to %00 in name
• Privilege escallation using an event handler attached to an element not in the document
• Frame spoofing while window is loading
• XSS using addEventListener and setTimeout
• Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

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Mozilla has updated the popular Firefox browser to version 2.0.0.4, with the main changes being security fixes, improved support for Windows Vista and new languages (Afrikaans and Belarusian). The full release notes can be viewed here and if Firefox does not automatically update you can manually download the new version either by clicking on the "Help" menu and choosing "Check for Updates" or by visiting the Mozilla download page. Firefox 2.0.0.4 is available for Windows, Mac OS X and most versions of Linux - check here for a full list of downloads. Don't forget that add-ons and themes may require compatibility updates for this new version of Firefox.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 is now available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux in over 35 languages. Thunderbird 2 offers easy ways to manage and organize your email with message tags, advanced folder views, message history navigation, find as you type, and improved new mail alert notifications. Thunderbird 2 also includes a refreshed user interface and support for Microsoft Vista. Download it from here.

A news post at Heise online caught my attention earlier today. Linked below is a picture out of the first tab patent (patent # 1,435,664) from 1922. Over 70 years Later this patent merged into a patent (# 5,160,296) owned by the father of an opera developer which was the first web browser utilizing tabbed browsing. The developer later on switched to the Mozilla team and so they were allowed to implement tabbed browsing. As Microsoft introduced the internet explorer 7 it was time for the Mozilla foundation to strike back.