As of now, the Jetpack library only features a small number of extensions. Users can browse Jetpacks by tag, author and popularity (though the most popular Jetpack (a Google Wave add-on) currently only has 24 downloads. Nonetheless, quite a few interesting Jetpack add-ons have already found their way into the gallery. These include a tool that translates text with Google Translate, a browser-based image editor from pixlr that can be invoked from the right-click menu in Firefox and a plugin that displays tabs with thumbnails in the left sidebar.

Give it a Try

To get started with Jetpack, you have to install the Jetpack plugin first. After that, just head over to the Jetpack Gallery and install a few of the plugins. To manage the installed Jetpacks, point your browser to about:jetpack.

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.

Moving forward from the motivational fanfare, Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard at the Hacks.Mozilla.Org blog has a rather in-depth and interesting post on the rise of modern web browsing, the triumph of standards in web development, the hackable goodness that is browser UI customization, user generated content and geeky stuff like RSS, APIs, and JSON

He concludes, "Mozilla has been at the heart of many of the issues of the Internet over the last five years. We've vastly improved the browsing experience for hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've managed to keep Microsoft honest and forced them to release newer versions of their browsers. Firefox's presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market. We've made it possible for third party browser vendors like Google to enter the market."

He noted that future releases of Firefox with deal with issues such as users' sharing data with websites, more open video codecs and improvements to mobile browsing.

Over at the Mozilla blog, the company's flack Melissa Shapiro shares some interesting stats. Since Mozilla's auspicious one-million-downloads-in-four-days start, she writes, "that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience."

In fact, some websites report that nearly half their visitors are Firefox users. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg writes that Firefox users represent nearly 46 percent of Wordpress' blog stats as opposed to Internet Explorer users, who comprise around 39 percent. "This is the first time I've ever seen Firefox pass IE in market share for a mainstream audience like WordPress.com has," said Mullenweg.

Firefox is sharing its official, worldwide celebration with users everywhere via their special anniversary site, where folks can share pics and videos from their Firefox parties or submit commemorative poster designs.

Answered Ascher, "While some engineers in Mozilla Messaging are working on both Thunderbird and Raindrop, we have no immediate plans to merge the two services. Thunderbird is a desktop client and Raindrop is hosted on the browser. These are separate services for separate types of users."

Ascher explained that Raindrop is still very much experimental and unlike Google Wave, Mozilla Messaging is not interested in creating a new protocol. Instead the service uses an open API to pull feeds and conversations out of existing communication tools. Meanwhile, Thunderbird is viewed as a desktop messaging client. For now, the group's priority is further improving both the Thunderbird product and the development environment. According to Ascher some of Thunderbird 3's best features include:

1. Search with Advanced Filtering: Thunderbird 3 allows users to search with a number of filters. Generally when we're searching for a note we know who some of the message participants are, we might remember if there is an attachment and we'd likely know who sent it. Thunderbird 3 also gives users the option to search by date via a timeline view and omit those who are not a part of the desired email.

2. Tabbed Email: Similar to Firefox's tabbed browsing, Thunderbird users can view emails in separate tabs and switch between tabs for easy referral. This is a great feature for group activities, travel and planning purposes.

3. Set up Wizard: Rather than being required to know your IMAP, SMTP, SSL/TLS settings, users can simply provide their name, email address and password to setup and sync new accounts. With this ease-of-use new staff and volunteers might actually have a chance to being up and running in the morning of their first day of employment.

4. Smart Folders: Users can view all of the incoming messages from their separate email accounts in one long stream or break them up in to separate folders.

5. Add-Ons Manager: Similar to Firefox's Add-On environment, Thunderbird is offering users the chance to download extensions, themes and plug-ins. Some of the most interesting ones include the Lightning Calendar client as well as plans to build a service where users can track Twitter followers and follow them back from within the messaging client.

Ascher sees this level of customization as one of Mozilla Messaging's strengths. Says Ascher, "Thunderbird is flexible for those who want to personalize it. As an organization, we've always empowered our users to choose the functionality of our products."

To download Thunderbird visit getthunderbird.com.

With support from Mozilla announced with the release of Firefox 3.6, and with the advocacy of leading type foundries such as Linotype, Emigre, and Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the question of web fonts might be satisfactorily resolved in the near future.

In a blog post, Mozilla contributor John Daggett wrote, "The WOFF format originated from a collabaration between the font designers Erik van Blokland and Tal Leming with help from Mozilla's Jonathan Kew. Each had proposed their own format and WOFF represents a melding of these different proposals. The format itself is intended to be a simple repackaging of OpenType or TrueType font data, it doesn't introduce any new behavior, alter the @font-face linking mechanism or affect the way fonts are rendered. Many font vendors have expressed support for this new format so the hope is this will open up a wider range of font options for web designers."

Of course, Firefox 3.6 will be the first browser to support the new format, so designers will need to include @font-face rules for other browsers, at least for the time being. Not surprisingly, creating such rules for Internet Explorer is more complicated than for other browsers, as IE only plays nicely with Embedded Open Type faces and a limited set of @font-face rule descriptors.

Internet Explorer wonkiness aside, WOFF is a widely supported and relatively prominent step in the right direction, and we hope more browser versions will support the format. It's about time for web pages to lose their homogeneity, for designers to gain more tools for brand and personal expression, for search engines to read more fonts, and for users to have richer browsing experiences.

Interested web developers and designers should also check out woffTools, a Python package for examining and manipulating WOFF files. This package also contains a set of command line tools for verifying and examining the files.

In the latest edition of the Firefox browser, the team has introduced the following new features:

• Built-in support for Personas, Firefox's themeing system which lets you browse through a gallery of skins and apply different ones with just a click
• Plugin alerts: Firefox will now alert users if their plugins are out-of-date, a useful addition since older plugins can lead to performance problems and even security issues.
• Open native videos can now be viewed full-screen
• Drag-and-drop features: In the beta, you can drag and drop files from your computer into the browser allowing you to easily upload files from your PC to web sites. 
• Support for the WOFF font format
• Support for CSS, DOM, HTML5, and other developer features
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time

Why Speed Matters

Although Firefox and its rival web browsers are all fighting to best Internet Explorer in terms of install base, they still pit themselves against each other with their unique features, being first to offer support for new standards, and of course, web browser performance.

It's in this last area that Firefox has struggled recently. Past builds showed Firefox beaten by the up-and-comer Google Chrome in boot-up, page-loading, and JavaScript performance. Despite Chrome's low market share of only around 4%, no company can safely ignore the competition when that competition is Google (just look at what Google did to the GPS market last week!).

Chrome may be a relatively unknown browser among mainstream users for now, but if Google holds true to their promises to launch their netbook operating system, Google Chrome OS, which uses the Chrome browser to run applications, there could be a whole new user base of Walmart shoppers who rapidly make a browser switch without even realizing it. And with Chrome's primary focus on browser speed, designed from the ground-up with the idea of running intensive web applications, Mozilla knows that one day Chrome could end up being serious competition...at least once the large majority of computing moves to the cloud. In fact, that day may have already arrived for some of today's web users.

To improve browser performance, Mozilla introduced a new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey in Firefox 3.5. Many of the speed increases in 3.6 can now be attributed to this technology. However, TraceMonkey has to go up against Chrome's own system, V8, which Google optimized earlier this year to give their browser a 30% speed bump.

Of course, we'll need to see some formal tests completed before determining where the browsers stand today, but it's likely going to be a situation where the engines are neck-and-neck in terms of performance. While this aspect to the browser war may go unnoticed by most web surfers, it's the sort of situation where everyone wins. And the prize will be a faster web surfing experience, no matter which browser you choose to use.

Today, Flock is trying a new strategy. The company plans to extend itself beyond the "social" niche by trying to find a home in an entirely different one: the Hispanic web. To tap into this new audience, Flock is releasing a Spanish-language web browser in partnership with Univision Interactive Media, the top Spanish-language media company in the U.S.

According to Flock's VP of Business Development and Marketing, Dan Burkhart, there are now more than 22 million Hispanics online and the market's growth will continue to outpace that of the English-speaking web for the foreseeable future. Although social networking sites have released Spanish-language versions - for example, latino.myspace.com - he notes that there are "few if any social enabling applications that have made the investment to serve this important market." The Hispanic audience also actively engages in social networking activities. More than 40% visit sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on a daily basis. Thanks to Flock's built-in social networking features, says Burkhart, that audience can now stay connected to those sites and to popular content from Univision.com.

In order to promote the product to the Hispanic web audience, the homepage of Univision.com will feature a large display ad touting the browser. In addition, there will be other display ads across the Univision network as well as pre-roll trailers inserted into video content. Next year, the company will pursue other offline channels to promote the Spanish version of Flock, too.

As with the specialized versions of Flock that have been released in the past, such as the green "Eco Edition" and the fashionable "Gloss Edition," this new Univision-branded version will offer favorite bookmarks, RSS feeds, media streams of popular Univision links, videos, and photos and persistent links to other areas of Univision.com. It will also come with a default homepage tab that takes you right to the Univision homepage.

However, the company is quick to point out that this new version is different from the Eco and Gloss editions of the browser, both of which are no longer supported. While those versions were clever marketing gimmicks at the time - the Eco edition was released on Earth Day, for instance - neither were able to attract a wide audience. That's because they didn't have sizeable distribution partners, says Burkhart. "By partnering with Univision, who has been the most visited Spanish language website for many years running, we have a dedicated partner who is committed to ensuring that the Univision Edition of Flock is distributed aggressively."

Will the Hispanic Web Market Help Flock Succeed?

It will be interesting to see how Flock does among the Spanish-speaking audience, especially because the browser itself is still the same under the hood. Although it will feature Univision content, Spanish-language menus and soon, a full Spanish-language installer, it's not a new product. It's still the same Flock. And that was the problem that most people had with it in the first place.

Earlier this year, when we asked the question: "why don't you love Flock?" we received over 100 comments in response. For many people the browser's interface was too busy and cluttered, making them feel overloaded with information. Others claimed that Flock was a resource hog and prone to bugs and crashes. And still others preferred Webkit-built browsers like Safari and Chrome, both of which are known for their speed.

The question now is whether or not these same complaints will put off the Hispanic audience, too, or if they will overlook these issues because the browser so uniquely caters to their needs. Only time will tell how well Univision's marketing push succeeds, but ultimately, if Flock can't address its shortcomings in some way, it won't work for any audience, no matter what language they speak.

The Spanish version of Flock is available for download now at flock.univision.com.

While email clients can filter bot and spam messages, it's more difficult to discern between personal and general messages from real people. With Raindrop, users messages are categorized and prioritized. For example, in Twitter your direct messages and reply messages are highlighted while the rest of the stream is cast aside. Meanwhile, mailing list messages are also given their own category, separate from personal emails. As with most Mozilla products, the group will encourage front-end widgets and code from outside 3rd party developers.

While the tool certainly shows promise, it is currently only available to developers. The group's first priority is to build a downloadable installer. To ensure that you're one of the first non-developer testers, keep an eye on labs.mozilla.com/raindrop.

Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.

Thanks to Arjo for the tip!