FOSDEM ‘10 – from a first timer

February 21st, 2010 by FuzzyFox with No Comments »

FOSDEM, now over 2 weeks ago, was the third event I have been to with the Mozilla Community. Each of these events have been different and had their own little quirks. MozCampEu09 was about nothing other than Mozilla related projects. The Mozilla UK Firefox 5th anniversary was, well…. a party not a conference. FOSDEM however is a completely different story. It was a conference / social gathering with, as they say it on their own site, gathers “5000+ geeks”.

FOSDEM like MozCampEu09, is something that is difficult to describe, there is nothing more… invigorating, than meeting up with a large number of people, many of whom you do not know, that all share a common interest.

aLargeCrowd

I spent a large amount of my time in the Mozilla Dev Room and on the Mozilla Booth while I was at the event, and I have the format for both is completely different to what I expected, and it was nice. The whole thing was a lot more relaxed than I anticipated which in turn, made me more relaxed. There were a few times when things got a little more hectic such as lunch and trying to get into the Dev Room for the HTML5 talk (which I eventually gave up on due to the queue going all the way down the corridor) and at lunch times while at the booth.

Not only was the whole thing a lot more relaxed but there was a lot to talk about, even for someone who has less knowledge on the actual technological side of things at the moment (what with being a student still and not a master like some who were there). Read the rest of this entry »

What’s your style?

January 21st, 2010 by FuzzyFox with 1 Comment »

Gorjan's PersonaEver wanted to change the wallpapers in your room? 3 times a day? Well with Firefox 3.6 that is now possible for your browser thanks to its integrated Personas.[1] With more than 30000 personas to choose from (and more every day), you can theme Firefox just the way you like it. It’s super easy as well to create your very own Personas and add them to the gallery, and be among thousands of other designers from all over the world!

To help us find out which Personas out there you love the most, we present you with a  challenge, to help celebrate the launch of Firefox 3.6 and its newest and possibly greatest feature. We want you to show off your Firefox with your favourite Personas installed. We have even taken the time out to do it have already done our own Perosna-portraits ourselves, as well as and provided you with some great tools to help you get started.

So what are you waiting for? Head to www.spreadfirefox.com/get-personas and share your style with the world!

Oh, and the picture you see here? That is Gorjan from Mozilla Macedonia showing off just one of the ways you can join in!

[1] For those of you that are new to the Personas feature, they are lightweight themes for Firefox that are easy to install and chage without the need to restart your browser.

Firefox 3.6 – Fashionably Late

January 21st, 2010 by FuzzyFox with 1 Comment »

Okay, so Firefox 3.6 is a little later than planned, however we are sure that you will find the wait has been worth while. As they say in the world of fame, “it is fashionable to be late”. That is not all that is fashionable about this new version of the browser. Oh no, that is just the start of it.

With a new theme system known as Personas you can now change the look of the browser in seconds, with a choice that just boggles the mind. How often are you going to want to choose from over 30,000 different themes? Fashion is not all that Firefox is about however an there have been many changes under the hood that you may not notice. So let us fill in some of the details for you.

For Designers there is now support for CSS gradients as well as WOFF (these are small fonts that you can integrate into a website). This means that not only will you be able to make your sites look good, but they will load faster than ever before.

Oh and did we mention that Firefox 3.6 is fast? Firefox 3.6 is 20% faster than 3.5, and, if you remember, 3.5 was 3 times faster than Firefox 3. So on the whole, you cant get much faster without the safety that Firefox provides. This safety comes to you in the from of the new plug-in check feature that will allow you to see if your plug-ins are up-to-date, or if they need a little bit of an upgrade.

Programmers of the world. We did not forget you in the slightest. You can now add page orientation to your web apps thanks to the new orientation API. You can also use drag and drop functions as well as use the new FILE API to make your web apps more like desktop apps.

For all those out there that love to customize your browsing experience (with over 6000 Add-ons and over 30,000 Personas), to those of you that love to make the web better. Firefox 3.6 is the browser for you.

So visit www.firefox.com and enjoy a faster, safer and more secure way to use the web.

The Migration

January 18th, 2010 by FuzzyFox with 7 Comments »

It is a trend that is catching on and hopefully will become global. This trend is the migration from Microsoft Internet Explorer to a better browser. After years of trying to convince technologically inept relatives to stop using Internet Explorer, computer geeks worldwide may finally rejoice as they have something new to back up their words. The German and French Governments!

The French government joined Germany today in advising to its citizens to stop using IE and migrate to another browser. Hopefully this will mean a large jump in the amount of Firefox users this month :D

The announcements come after a recent admission by Microsoft that there is a serious security problem that can be found not only one version but in numbers 6, 7, and 8!

Internet security company McAfee pointed out this security vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which allowed hackers in China to attack Google, Adobe and a large number of other companies, including Yahoo and Northrop Grumman.

While Microsoft is working on a fix for the problem, I believe that this is a big, and potentially critical blow to the company and will encourage a large number of people to migrate away from the browser permanently.

My next thought is this… How do we take advantage of this in the Mozilla Community and help people make the right choice when looking for another browser? Not only that, but how do we encourage other governments to follow the German lead and get them to advise people to steer clear of the browser?

Firefox Demostrates Crash Recovery

January 16th, 2010 by FuzzyFox with 6 Comments »

Firefox Crash Recovery

I wonder… Is this how Mozilla got the idea for crash recovery in Firefox? What other features are they working on that come from this wonderful animal?!

 

Thanks to jX for the find.