ReadWriteWeb

Catching up to Chrome is just part of the Firefox roadmap for 2012. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler has updated the strategy and roadmap for desktop Firefox in 2012. While the Mozilla folks have several original ideas and goals, there's a lot in the first half of the 2012 roadmap that looks very familiar to Chrome users as well. The really interesting features come in the second half of 2012, and relate to user privacy and account management. Third party cookie management and tracking could be a killer feature for Firefox later this year.

If you have a look at the desktop feature roadmap, you'll see that Q1 and Q2 have quite a few features that are either already in Google Chrome. For example, there's sync for add-ons, assuming add-ons work across releases, silent update and a redesigned new tab page.

Mozilla's Dietrich Ayala would like to have one million contributors to Firefox in 2012. It's a tough, probably unreachable, goal that Ayala says he's kidding about. Kind of.

Ayala spoke at FOSDEM about developing Firefox in 2012, and new approaches that Mozilla is taking to try to reduce time and effort required for contributing to the browser.

If you're one of the few Firefox users still on Windows 2000 or still using Windows XP without Service Pack 2 or later, Firefox is going to have to say goodbye. Yesterday, Mozilla's Asa Dotzler announced that Firefox team is moving to a newer version of the Visual Studio toolchain. Once Mozilla moves to Visual Studio 2010, they won't be able to build for Windows 2000, XP RTM or SP1.

Mozilla has some big plans up its sleeve in 2012. The non-profit open source foundation is planning some features for its Firefox Web browser and beyond that will require greater access to user data. In a blog post, the organization explains exactly how it intends to use and handle that data. In short, very carefully.

Some of Mozilla's initiatives for this year include an HTML5 Web app store, a mobile operating system and perhaps most intensive of all, a decentralized system for user identification and authentication at the browser level. In other words, a browser-based replacement for usernames and passwords.

The change in emphasis for HTML5 away from just content and more toward functionality, coupled with a much deeper impact from Apple on the broader model of computing than even Apple's most adamant fans could have anticipated, has led to a changed scenario for the Web. By this time next year, barring any delays, the Web delivery model for the world's three most prevalent platforms - Windows, iOS, and Android - will be based on apps.

This changes the landscape for developers like Mozilla and Opera Software, whose value propositions to date have been based around building better browsers: If the user now bypasses the browser icon and goes directly to an app, how does a browser maker convince customers that there's value in swapping out the engines that run their apps - components which, like graphics cards, they probably never see or even care about?

Several of the largest Interent firms - including Google, Facebook and Twitter - are backing alternate legislation being proposed to the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts.

The OPEN act sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would allow the International Trade Commission to order online ad networks and payment processors to sever ties withe foreign websites that are targeted by patent infringement claims.

SOPA, and its Senate counerpart, PIPA, on the other hand, would force search engines and websites to block links to sites that are listed as being "dedicated" to copyright infringement. SOPA has been widely endorsed by traditional media companies, but Web firms and free speech advocates have likened it to government-enforced censorship.

In a world where eligible candidates for Web-related positions range from 14 to 81 years of age, and thousands worldwide may compete for an open position or contract, how can an employer expect to screen them all? In the old days, people used degrees; but in an environment where today's skills become tomorrow's bird cage liners, major players in Web development are suggesting the old system may already be outmoded.

A system proposed earlier this year by the Mozilla Foundation will be the basis of a global competition. As much as $2 million in grants from Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation will be awarded to interested parties, in amounts ranging up to $200,000 apiece, who can propose a technical infrastructure and/or physical appearance for what Mozilla describes as a standard system of verified icons for representing individuals' Web developmental skills.

If you've been living under an Internet-free rock the past couple of weeks, you might have managed to miss the steady drumbeat of opposition to HR 3261, the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Then again, if you've been living under an Internet-free rock, you've already had a preview of what we're facing if SOPA goes into effect.

I'm exaggerating a little, but not by much. We've covered SOPA earlier this week and the EFF's efforts to rally opposition to the bill. But today is American Censorship Day and a hearing for the bill in the U.S. House that's stacked in favor of the bill.

Another dangerous bill is winding its way through Congress, this time it's the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) by Texas representative Lamar Smith. Smith's bill would establish a system for taking down Web sites that the Justice Department "determines to be dedicated to copyright infringement."

The bill is, by nearly any sane measure, overreaching and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that the bill targets Mozilla specifically for refusing to comply with Homeland Security's ICE unit.

Presenting Web video using HTML5 technology has a few obvious advantages. The one that comes most easily to mind is cross-device compatibility. As long as Apple refuses to support Flash on its smartphones and tablets (read: indefinitely), anybody who sticks with that format for Web video is going to be missing out on a serious number of eyeballs.

Using HTML5 for video also satisfies that little open Web standards advocate in all of us. In addition to all that, it enables a new level of interactivity and allows video content to be integrated with, and enhanced by, outside data sources using APIs.