ReadWriteWeb

Sometimes you have to take a stand, even if that means standing against the United States Department of Homeland Security. That is what Mozilla is doing concerning the MafiaaFire extension to Firefox.

MafiaaFire redirects traffic from seized domains to other domains. According to Mozilla legal blogger Harvey Anderson MafiaaFire "seized domain names allegedly were used to stream content protected by copyrights of professional sports franchises and other media concerns." The domains in question alleged acts of piracy have little to do with Firefox itself and MafiaaFire just redirects from those seized sites. Mozilla is not going to disable the extension just because DHS wants them to. It wants legal justification.

John Resig, creator of the web's most popular javascript library, jQuery, just announced that he's leaving the Mozilla Foundation and joining online education powerhouse Khan Academy. Resig worked at Mozilla for more than 4 years, joining in January 2007 as a Javascript Evangelist after leaving a position as a developer on the One Laptop Per Child Project.

He'll continue working on jQuery at Khan, as well as the organization's other Open Source efforts and its forthcoming iPad app. JQuery Mobile was released this Fall; ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez said it "may have a major impact on mobile Web development."

A new add-on to Firefox combines resources location and category search to the toolbar while protecting your browsing activity.

AwesomeBar HD is a spin-off from the Home Dash project designed by Mozilla developer Edward Lee to improve browsing and content discovery without the use of a toolbar. AwesomeBar is the opposite of Home Dash: instead of getting rid of the toolbar, it makes the address bar much more intuitive.

A common complaint about Firefox is that it's just too slow, particularly upon launching. And after touting the speed and enhanced performance in the browser's most recent release, Mozilla wants to make it clear to users: if Firefox is slow, it's probably your add-ons.

Of course, the wide variety of add-ons and the ability to customize your browser to your liking is one of the things that has long made Firefox an appealing choice. But in a post on its blog, Mozilla reveals some stats from performance-testing. It found that for every add-on you install, you're adding about 10% to the amount of time it takes for Firefox to start-up.

When Google first introduced Chrome OS and the idea of "Web apps" last December, the idea made little sense to me. Then, over time, as I became used to it and started playing around with their prototype CR-48 unit, which runs the browser-based operating system, it began to make more and more sense. But still, there was something missing.

Today, Mozilla announced its own Web app initiative and, in just minutes, it makes so much more sense than the vision put forth over the several months since the same idea was first introduced by Google.

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.

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.

As the FTC eyes consumer privacy issues and investigates an online "Do Not Track" option, it seems as though web browsers are responding in kind, offering their own solutions to better protect Internet users' data. For its part, IE9 says it will offer "Tracking Protection" via the browser. And now Mozilla has released its contribution: a set of privacy icons meant to inform people about how their data may be used by the websites they visit.

Mozilla lead designer Aza Raskin posted the alpha version of the privacy icons on his blog, along with an explanation of their meaning and a recognition of the challenges to adoption they might face.

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.