ReadWriteWeb

Mike Beltzner, the man in charge of the development of open source browser Firefox, announced this morning that he'll be leaving Mozilla once the 4.0 version of the popular browser launches and he's helped transition the team towards developing 5.0 without him. You'll never guess where he's going next. Apparently he's joining a company called Dug Software, a 70 employee provider of geological exploration software.

Beltzner came from IBM Canada almost 6 years ago. At Mozilla, he helped build one of the most important pieces of software in the world. Firefox broke Internet Explorer's stranglehold over the browser market and forced Microsoft to support universal internet technical standards. Firefox has an estimated 30% world wide market share among browser users, a remarkable achievement.

The mobile version of Firefox for Android and Maemo just hit a new milestone: Firefox 4 Beta, an update which delivers speed improvements, better panning and zooming, and faster startup time, says Mozilla. Like previous versions of the browser, it also includes standard Firefox features like support for add-ons, Firefox Sync for syncing bookmarks, tabs and browsing history across devices, and even support for Personas, also known as themes.

When the Federal Trade Commission announced late last year that it was investigating ways to protect consumers' privacy, it suggested a "Do Not Track" option for every browser. This would give users the ability to opt out of online advertising - an effort akin to the "Do Not Call" registry, from that bygone era where solicitations came via the phone rather than pop-up ads.

In response, both Mozilla and Google have announced changes to their respective browsers todays, with the addition of "Do Not Track" features for Firefox and Chrome.

Word hit the Web this week, via a Mozilla executive posting on a developer list, that Firefox 4 was finally on its way next month. The only thing standing in the way? About 160 "hard blockers", or significant bugs, that needed to be addressed.

A big part of fixing bugs is testing and today Mozilla announced the next major version of Firefox 4 Beta for users to help test. The latest version includes increased performance, start-up time, bookmarking and graphics capabilities. Read on for the details.

Get ready, Firefox fans, because Firefox 4 is on the way. PCWorld writes that the next version of the second most popular browser worldwide is "nearly ready for release" and should be available starting next month.

Mozilla's senior director Damon Sicore wrote on a developer mailing list that "Firefox 4 is gonna kick ass," but that, until the launch "we need *everyone* to help in testing."

By popular demand, Quora released a minimal, JSON-based API for browser extension developers last week. Quora's Charlie Cheever had previously written, on Quora no less, that the company was holding off on releasing an API for a number of reasons.

However, following two third-party browser extensions for Quora, the company has decided to release an official API in alpha to support those efforts. The new API will provide basic information for the currently logged users, including notifications and unread message count.

Firefox has overtaken Internet Explorer to become the number one browser in Europe, reports analytics company StatCounter. According to December figures, Firefox had 38.11% of the European market share, compare to IE's 37.52%.

It's the first time that IE has been knocked out of the number one position in a major geographical area, says Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter's CEO, who points to the growth of Google's Chrome as the reason for the shift. It isn't that Firefox is gaining steam, but rather than IE is losing users to Chrome.

A database containing 44,000 usernames and password hashes associated with accounts registered on the Mozilla add-ons website was accidentally made public, the organization and makers of the Firefox Web browser said on Monday. The partial database of user accounts was mistakenly left on a Mozilla public server, which would have allowed anyone to access the account usernames and the password hashes.

The good news? Says Mozilla: no one did. Well, no one except for the one security researcher who found them.

Aza Raskin, the eccentric lead designer at Mozilla's Firefox, announced today that he's leaving his position to co-found a startup in the healthcare market with mobile entrepreneur Sutha Kamal and at least one still-unnamed co-founder.

Already well funded by undisclosed investors, Raskin says the company, called Massive Health, will bring a User Experience designer's sensibility to healthcare. "With health-case costs rising faster than inflation, a crisis is on the horizon," he writes in a blog post announcing the move. "We need to apply cognitive psychology, the principles of design, and tighter feedback loops to our own health. Health care needs to have its design Renaissance, where products and services are redesigned to be responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties."

Yesterday, we also had a chance to interview Mozilla's chairperson Mitchell Baker at LeWeb in Paris. During this discussion, we talked about Mozilla's plans for the coming year, which involve a renewed focus on speed, app stores for the Web and open audio and video in the browser. We also touched upon Mozilla's vision for giving users the ability to control their online identity in the browser. Baker was also interviewed by Robert Scoble on stage at LeWeb today.