Mozilla Finally Succumbs to H.264 Support

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'

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Mozilla Launches Firefox 9.0.1 Right After Firefox 9 Due to Bugs

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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Microsoft's IE9 Strategy Fails to Produce Results

As the rise of other browsers, like Google Chrome, begin to show, so does the demise of others, namely Internet Explorer. The web browser, designed by Microsoft, continued to lose members last month, losing the largest number of users since December 2010.

During September, Internet Explorer lost nine-tenths of a percentage point of share, dropping to 54.4%, a new record low for the browser. The drop experienced last month was the seventh straight decline and the largest decline since December of last year where Internet Explorer fell by 1.1 points. Causing the decrease was, of course, Google Chrome, which saw shares increase by seven-tenths of a point. Adding to the decline was Apple's Safari browser, which saw an increase of four-tenths of a percentage point.

Chrome ended the month with a 16.2% share with Safari accounting for 5% of all browsers used worldwide. Microsoft, on the other hand, focused on looking at the brighter side by plugging the success of Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7. Head of Internet Explorer's Marketing Roger Capriotti used data from Net Applications to highlight the gains of IE9 by pointing out that the browser version owned 21% global share of browsers running on Windows 7.

Internet Explorer 9 is the second-most popular internet browser on Windows 7 with a 21% compared to Internet Explorer 8's leading 31.6%. Firefox 6 and Chrome 13 came in third and fourth place, respectively, with 13.9% and 13.1%. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't outlined an alternate strategy for stopping IE defections. While the focus on Internet Explorer 9 may pay off in the long run, it has failed to slow down the number of defectors heading to Safari, Chrome or Firefox. Since its debut, Microsoft has lost 4 percentage points of share with Internet Explorer 9.

Source: Computer World - Microsoft's IE9-first strategy fails to stem browser slide

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Mozilla Debating a 5-Week Release Schedule for Firefox

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 Rapid Release Schedule for Firefox Comes Under Scrutiny

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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Chrome 11 Hits Beta Form with Some Amazing Additions

The latest and greatest edition of Firefox, known as Firefox 4, was just released a few days ago in an official worldwide release. Upon looking at it for the first time, it appears to be a great update to the Mozilla Firefox browser containing immense speed improvements. And if there is anything a browser needs these days to stay in the game, it is fast, and I mean fast, speeds.

You can attribute that need to Google's shot at an internet browser with Google Chrome, which is one of the fastest growing internet browsers on the market. But just because Mozilla added faster speeds to Firefox 4 to combat Google Chrome does not mean Google Chrome is just sitting there taking it. On the exact same day that Mozilla launched Firefox 4, Google pushed out Chrome 11 in beta form. At first glance, Chrome 11's beta may appear to be no more than a reason to show off the new Google Chrome icon. However, if you dig deep, you will realize that there are a few amazing things to be seen, things you won't want to miss.

One new feature for Chrome 11 is added support for HTML5's speech input API. What this means is that you will have the ability to talk to your computer while Chrome 11 interprets it. For those of you tech savvy folks that have already gotten the hang of this via an Android device or other mobile platform, this is something you will definitely love. One thing to note is that this is an HTML5 spec so it is not Chrome 11 specific, any internet browser can use it. Though if you want to use it right now, you have to get the Chrome 11 beta.

According to reports about the talk to text feature, the program works quite well. You speak whatever you want to say and the browser is able to transcribe your speech into visible text on the screen. The best part is that you don't need to install any annoying Flash player or plug-in, it just works.

Another feature of the Chrome 11 beta is an initial take on GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, according to Google. This will allow website developers to create sites with 3D effects using CSS very soon which, like the talk to text thing, is very cool.

As version numbers of internet browsers have been rapidly increasing, Google says that it does not like bragging about new version bumps. However, this one is still pretty cool and should be in stable form very shortly.

Source: TechCrunch - On Firefox 4 Day, Chrome 11 Hits Beta With The Ability To Talk To Your Computer!

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