Displaying items by tag: Mozilla

Although users would like to see Mozilla and Firefox on iOS platforms, this might not happen in near future, maybe even never. The problem is Apple's insistence that other web browsers for iOS need to browse the web using Apple's UIWebView component, while Apple for their web browser saved advanced Nitro JavaScript engine.

Mozilla has released new details about the availability of Firefox OS devices. Just before the start of the Mobile World Congress Mozilla they released a list of telecom operators, hardware manufacturers and the countries where smartphones running OS Firefox will initially be available. Some of the companies listed have already announced they have started development of smartphones with this OS. Among those listed are Samsung, LG and ZTE, and later this year they should be joined by Huawei. All these producers will make their models based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processors.

Last month Mozilla announced that they will cease the development of 64-bit Firefox for Windows (but not for Linux and Mac OS X). This move was, rightly, met with the disapproval of many users. However Mozilla refused to change their mind until now.

Microsoft is in a bit of trouble over their decision to grant users in the EU the right to choose their browser upon the installation of the Windows operating system. Now I know you are thinking that they have already been in trouble for this before, so why are we bringing it up again? Well the issue is that with the launch of Windows 7 Service Pack 1… Microsoft just stopped allowing for the browser election. Yup, any new system shipped with Windows 7 SP1 would boot up just like the good old days (for Microsoft). Well the European Union would like to talk to them about it.

On Saturday we published an editorial about some of the issues with Windows RT. These issues served to highlight why Microsoft might have chosen to build their own tablet. Although we do not agree with the decision and think that it will hurt Microsoft in the long run (with Windows RT) we cans still see how it all unfolded. As you might imagine not everyone saw things the way that we did, but what surprised me was a comment that seemed to indication that the development community was going to HAVE to write for Windows RT.

After reporting on the potential for Congressional involvement in the “issue” over Windows RT we are hearing that Mozilla is trying to drag this into a new area simply because the new software will have the name “Windows” in it. You see Mozilla’s argument revolves around Microsoft’s promises to make “Windows” more open to other developers. When asked how Microsoft’s new way of handling Windows RT differs from what both Google and Apple are doing they claimed that by not allowing access to certain Win32 APIs that Microsoft has ported to WindowsRT (the actually only exist in the desktop mode) they are locking out competition.

So Mozilla complains about Microsoft and suddenly Congress wants to take a look at Microsoft’s plans for Windows on ARM. Now we are not really surprised that Mozilla is complaining (after all that is what they do), but we are shocked that they are not complaining about Google and Apple at the same time.While we are not all that happy with the direction that Microsoft is going with Windows 8 and Windows RT they are not doing anything that has not been done by both Apple and Google on the same platform; the tablet.

When Microsoft first announced that only Microsoft based products would have access to the “desktop” mode in Windows on ARM (Windows RT) we began to wonder just how long it would take for Mozilla, Google, Opera and others to chime in about how wrong this is. We now have heard from Mozilla who seems to feel that this lock out from the desktop is nothing more than Microsoft being unfair to the competition and, according to Mozilla, is in violate of the promises Microsoft made to both the EU and the US DoJ.

Apparently it has been something of a tradition for the Internet Explorer Team over at Microsoft to send a congratulatory pastry to FireFox with each new version they ship. However, now that Mozilla is pushing out a “new” release every six weeks the IE gang has shortened up on the size of the pastry. For their latest release MS sent over a small Cup Cake only. The running joke is that because of the smaller update the congratulatory gift is also smaller.

Mozilla’s new rapid release program is supposed to allow patches and fixes to get to market quicker without the normal delay of a major feature update. This decision by Mozilla has cause mixed feelings in the IT community and also the consumer market. Many feel that the short span is annoying and can be inconvenient. IE on the other hand is sticking with the larger full featured releases which, while some times better developed can also throw wrenches into web page performance and compatibility.

Honestly there really is no better way to do this, but I do wish that both companies would address some of the security and performance issues that are plaguing both browsers. FireFox needs to fix the Flash bug that it has while MS really needs to work on securing the way that Plug-in interact with it (especially allowing elevated privileges).

Still it is sort of funny to find out that the IE team sends over a (cup)cake every time a new version of FireFox ships.

Source CNET

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While cruising around the web looking for something interesting to write about I stumbled upon a hastily written article about a new mobile OS from Mozilla. Thinking this was something interesting I headed over to Mozilla’s Wiki website to read more, what I found was as concerning as it was interesting. For those that do not know, Mozilla is the creative force behind such open source applications as FireFox and Thunderbird. These two have been in competition with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and to a lesser degree Outlook. The question is can they compete with companies like Google and Apple in addition to Microsoft. Now all of this is the interesting part, what is concerning is the fact that they want your mobile OS to be all cloud based. They do not come out and say this directly but they say “Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development. To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike”