ReadWriteWeb

Just a few days after releasing Firefox for the Nokia N900 handset, Mozilla just announced that it is also making good progress on an Android version of Firefox. According to Firefox developer Vladimir Vukićević, development of Android for Firefox is progressing quickly. While there are no plans for the release of an official alpha version just yet, Vukićević has already managed to compile and install an early version of Firefox for Android.

Last week, YouTube announced they will begin supporting the upcoming web standard HTML5 which allows videos to be viewed without an Adobe Flash plugin. Those who wanted to play around with the new HTML5-enabled website were directed to a separate experimental site called TestTube. However, noted the YouTube blog post, only Chrome, Safari, and IE users could give the new site a try. Firefox was notably absent from the list.

Plans to Release it as a Minor Update to 3.6 Instead

Earlier today, Computerworld broke the news that Mozilla plans to "dump" Firefox 3.7 from its schedule and change the way it develops and releases its browser. We talked to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, about these changes. Beltzner noted that Mozilla isn't really "dumping" version 3.7. Instead, Mozilla took a closer look at its development roadmap and realized that there was simply no need to release Firefox 3.7 because the Firefox team now plans to release the most important update to 3.7 as a regular security update to Firefox 3.6.

Mozilla has made the first release candidate for Firefox 3.6 available for download this morning, following a recent announcement that further releases would be delayed.

Firefox 3.6, codename "Namoroka", looks to improve startup time and general responsiveness, among other issues.

If you want to help Mozilla to make Firefox better but you are not a developer, here is your chance. Earlier this year, Mozilla announced the launch of Test Pilot, the organization's new distributed usability lab. Test pilots will be enlisted in various usability tests and will be some of the first to see some of Mozilla's ideas for new user interfaces and Mozilla Labs products. We first wrote about Test Pilot when it was just a "still-in concept platform." Now, however, you can download the Test Pilot add-on for Firefox 3.5 here and begin to help Mozilla make Firefox even better.

Opera just released the first pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. While most users generally only think about Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome as the major players in the current browser wars, there can be no doubt that Opera is working hard to push browser development forward as well. This latest alpha version shows that Opera has worked hard to speed up the browser. Carakan, the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5, is up to seven times faster than Opera's current engine. The new version of Opera also adds a number of new features like an enhanced private browsing mode and a new graphics engine that can be hardware accelerated.

As part of the European Union's antitrust agreement with Microsoft, the company will be required next year to show a list of alternatives to Internet Explorer to any Windows user with IE installed as their default browser.

Love or hate the government intervention, it's notable to see which browsers are about to get a big boost in user numbers. The EU says increased viability in the browser market will lead to more competition and more innovation. Here are the companies that will get a first crack at new levels of market viability in Europe.

Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter. This comes on the heels of statistics we saw earlier this month, which showed Firefox overtaking IE for overall usage in Germany.

Earlier this morning, Mozilla released the fourth beta version of Firefox 3.6. Besides over 140 bug fixes, the new beta also introduces support for HTML5's local file handling API. This feature gives web apps the ability to access and handle local files selected by the user. A photo site that implements this feature can now work with images locally, for example. You don't have to upload your images to the site - instead, the web app can just manipulate the photo through the browser locally and an upload is only necessary if you want to store the image remotely.

Firefox gets distributed social networking and identity management.

The good people who work on the revolutionary, open-sourced, and occasionally maligned browser have been hard at work on making cross-site navigation and portable IDs a solvable problem. A discrete button to the left of the URL that can tell users whether or not they are logged in to a particular site and allow them to log in without further navigation? Accuse us of punning, but definitely sign us up. Google Chrome: Start taking notes.

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers Conference earlier this month. One of the unique features of IE9 that Microsoft announced at that time was hardware acceleration for its browser. Thanks to technologies like Direct2D and Direct Write that are available for Windows7, Windows developers can use a computer's graphics card to render websites faster. While Microsoft is still working on this project behind closed doors, however, you can already download a Direct2D-enabled pre-release version of Firefox 3.7 today.

In what's got to be the most amusing celebrity tech endorsement of the season so far, Dolly Parton has gone on YouTube endorsing Microsoft's IE8. It's got this great webslices feature, you see. "You've got to have Internet Explorer 8 to use webslices," she says, "shoot, I didn't even know there was a 1 through 7."

It's an awfully charming video by one of the greatest musicians of all time. This 63-year old mega-millionaire is downright folksy when talking about web browsers.

Hey, Firefox, kids who were freshmen in college when you started now have pointless internships in big cities and colossal amounts of student debt. Congratulations! You're officially old by Internet standards.

You've hit the one billion downloads mark and captured a truly significant percentage of Internet browser users. And you've got a hardcore community of open-source developers and fans who contribute to the thousands of extensions, plugins, and skins that make the user experience so customizable. But most importantly, you helped pave the way for the creation and mainstream proliferation of a bunch of nifty alternative browsers and provided impetus for aggressive improvements to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The latest update to the Firefox web browser has now been made available. Released Friday evening, Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 promises a number of new features, including built-in theme support and drag-and-drop file uploads, but perhaps most importantly, there is a renewed focus on browser speed. Claiming improved JavaScript performance, better overall responsiveness and faster startup times, there's no doubt Firefox's development in these areas has been fueled, at least in part, by the speed increases achieved by its rivals, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

Mozilla plans to release Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, for Nokia's Maemo, Windows Mobile and Android devices in the near future. In an interview with Om Malik, Mozilla CEO John Lilly also said that Mozilla has fallen behind in the mobile space, as WebKit-based browsers like Safari on the iPhone currently have a large lead, but he is confident that Mozilla can deliver a better browsing experience. Mozilla, according to Lilly, wanted to wait for devices to get to the point where they could handle everything a desktop browser could. Mozilla, however, isn't likely to develop a mobile version of Firefox for BlackBerry anytime soon.

Ever since the browser wars and the 1998 Microsoft antitrust trial (during which the software giant was convicted of monopolistic and illegal business practices for its bundling of Windows with Internet Explorer), consumers have been largely unaware of how they access the Internet. These magical portals are too often "chosen" by consumers through a manipulative dance during which the partner - generally a huge corporation with mind share and stock shares at stake - remains unseen.

"Some folks at Google," as the project team is quaintly described on Google's new What Browser site, were charged with explaining what a browser is and what choices consumers have. They got halfway there; but as far as helping consumers make informed choices, information is still limited to pretty colors and shiny logos.

After numerous betas and two release candidates, Opera today released the final version of Opera 10, the company's flagship desktop Internet browser. Users who skipped all the pre-release versions of Opera 10 will be pleasantly surprised with the updates that Opera has brought to its browser. These include Opera Turbo, the company's compression technology that makes surfing on slower connections more bearable, visual tabs, a smarter spell checker, and a faster rendering engine. Opera also still features a built-in email client and RSS reader.

In the age of transparency, it appears some of us are embarrassed to be ourselves. Maybe you're a closet Perez Hilton fan, or you check Woot! at work, or perhaps as suggested by PC Pro, you like to bookmark your porn collection. In any case, a number of Firefox 3 users reverted back to version 2 due to the location bar's (awesome bar's) ability to search against browser history and bookmarks. A recent Mozilla blog post walks users through the privacy control enhancements of Firefox 3.5.

Yahoo announced its acquisition of Maktoob today in a deal meant to improve programming in areas like the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Wrote VP of Emerging Markets Keith Nillson, "We're committed to responsible global engagement. This means being sensitive to local laws, customs, and norms." As critical thinkers, are we going to sit back in our English-only culture bubbles or do we also want a taste of that global engagement? If you're a Firefox user and you're interested in accessing foreign language sites, you may want to try the Worldwide Lexicon's new Universal Translator Toolbar.

The Opera Mini application is now considered not only the world's most popular mobile browser, but also the world's most downloaded app. According to independent applications marketplace GetJar, the browser has been downloaded more than 25 million times from its store. "The fact that Opera Mini is the most downloaded app on an open app store like GetJar makes us proud," said Opera's Chief Strategy Officer Rolf Assev. "It proves that our vision of providing a browser that works on almost all phones will give millions a better way to access the Web."