The Competition Keeps Firefox on its Toes
Mozilla has issued a couple of major updates in quick succession; the first one, an incremental update, came in the last week of October, and it was called version 3.5.4. This one was only a bug fix update, aimed at smoothing the user experience, and not a feature update. Some of those bug fixes would only be of interest to anyone who was technically inclined; bugs that deal with arcane things like download filename spoofing, memory safety flaws in media libraries, cross-origin data theft with document.getSelection(), and heap buffer overflow, have been addressed. And there are a few serious security problems sorted out as well, like the ability of outside agents to run arbitrary code and install viruses on your computer, or the hanging pointer vulnerability issue.But perhaps of real interest to mainstream users is the most recent update, still in Beta, the update release 3.6. This is quite a major update with lots of interesting new features for the power user. With Google’s Chrome snapping at Firefox’s heels, it is clear that Firefox is trying to address some of Chrome’s main competitive advantages: its overall speed, especially at startup. Version 3.6 does away with a few other recognized problems, such as JavaScript performance. For new users, Firefox introduces built-in support for the browsers seem system, Personas, the ability to view fullscreen movies with no add-ons, a scanning feature that will look through all the plug-ins installed on Firefox and check for updates for them to automatically, support for CSS, HTML 5 and other under the hood features. To bloggers, the new drag-and-drop feature can be particularly useful too. Firefox’s main advantage today is its vast installed base against Google’s Chrome’s. That browser may have a tiny installed base today but is expected to grow soon, especially with the release of Google’s Chrome operating system for netbooks. Competition always works in the consumer’s favour.
Raindrop: Mozilla’s Idea for a Personal E-Mail Gopher
The world’s e-mailing systems were on full throttle even before social networking exploded. At some point, everyone realizes this: that there are more niche social networking presences they subscribe to, than there is room in their generous e-mail capacities for. Here then Mozilla’s new online application for those overwhelmed by social networking, the newly launched Mozilla Raindrop. Raindrop aims to help the socially-networked maintain better control over their e-mail messages, getting to see their personal e-mail, their work e-mail, and other important correspondence apart from the tons of Facebook notifications, RSS feeds, and so on descending on their Inbox. Raindrop is supposed to be installed on your computer, where it will run as a personal web server that compiles all the different messages from all your subscriptions in one place, and shows them to you in a way you can actually use.Raindrop is an open source API that is intended to be built upon by other third-party developers for better sorting, and better features. To begin with, the application functions through any browser you choose at all: any browser that is compatible with Open Web Foundation projects. There are so far two different versions of Raindrop, and there are more on the way. It isn’t that easy to install it and run it though, as there isn’t a readily available installer yet to make it actually sit on your computer and act like program. There is one on the way though.
Raindrop is not a Firefox extension or add-on; it is a standalone application that can one day hold its own add-ons. Seen one way, Raindrop seems to take a cue from the kind of direction that Google and Gmail have been taking off late, where users bring in widgets for RSS, or chat. If it lives up to what is promised, Raindrop seems to be a great idea by the sound of it: a program that not only brings all of your online messages to one place, but also sorts the personal ones that really need your attention from masses of automated ones. Lets see how well it goes.
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