Get your wallpaper from the Foxkeh blog, available in several resolutions with or without an embedded calendar.

While the support for the <video> tag is pretty codec-neutral (you can use whatever video format you want provided you have the correct codec), Mozilla’s implementation makes it even easier by bundling Ogg Theora and Vorbis codecs ensuring developers a format to deliver.

However, there is a risk to bundling even an open source codec like Theora because of the possibility of submarine patents -patents nobody knows about until a product that unknowingly infringes it, succeeds, becoming a target for the patent owner who will seek monetary compensation and a good licensing agreement. This is why the HTML 5 spec doesn’t recommend any encoder so vendors don’t have to choose between taking this kind of risk or not complying with the standard.

During today’s announcement at the Products and Technology Roadmap Mozilla Summit session, Mitchell Baker commented that Mozilla would be a bad target as it is a project with a product a lot of people cares about.

Mike Shaver, interim Mozilla’s VP of Engineering, also commented “Somebody had to do it. It’s good it was us”.

Chris Double, the developer responsible in great part for this implementation that has taken more than a year, has set a test page with a few videos (including the insanely cool SVG+video demo), and also pointed to Wikimedia for more relevant videos. Due to Wikimedia browser capabilities detecting script, you will have to disable the QuickTime and Java plugins to actually use the <video> tags (Tools/Add-ons/Plugins).

Being an early prototype, Snowl currently only handles Twitter feeds and web feeds you subscribe either manually within Firefox or importing an OPML file.

Then comes another the other experimental aspect of Snowl: presentation. Twitter and web feeds are added to a sidebar (available from the View menu) but instead of folders and items as you may expect, you get a set of predefined searches that return not only the feed titles but also groupings by author name which consolidates all messages you have received from that person.

Click on a sidebar item and you get all the related messages in an email like view in either a horizontal or vertical layout.

Things then get even more interesting when you switch to Message River view (View menu). Based on the concept of the river of news, it consolidates the item titles or contents of the selected author or feed into a continuous page that favors horizontal scrolling (as opposed to typical vertical scrolling) as a way to: take advantage of larger screens and provide an experience that resembles the interaction with newspapers more closely.

Contents can be sorted by date ascending or descendingly, and are displayed in columns you can easily resize.

While the benefits are pretty obvious (make it easier for users the task of tracking the many communication ways currently available: email, social networks, web feeds, newsgroups, instant messaging and pretty much any asynchronous medium), Myk main question is: Is the browser the right place for this aggregation to happen?

For me it would work as I would definitely want to have it as close to my browser as possible. Messaging moved into the browser realm first and this just looks like the browser going to meet it half way, which is good.

What I am not sure is if it’s worth implementing so many interfaces with so many social networks and web mail providers, adding a dependency that is most likely to break at some point like Flock users can attest.

Ideally, I would prefer an open standard for the most common social networking and emailing activities: messaging and sharing, but it just seems so distant that maybe dealing with all the current web interfaces is a good enough second best.

Snowl should be available from the Mozilla Labs web site in the next few days, in the meantime you can get it and try it from Myk’s personal folder.

Perhaps the most notable improvement with this release is an option to restrict the location bar autocomplete suggestions to either history, tags or bookmarks only as well as an option to tell Firefox to search just for page titles or addresses when looking for a match.

To restrict to history, bookmarks or tags only, enter ^, * or + respectively somewhere between your terms. To include titles or addresses only, you enter # or @, and you can combine them with the previous operators to refine your suggestions.

New advanced settings (accessible entering about:config in the location bar) let you customize all the default characters and set your own character or group of characters to apply restrictions.

Even further, you can set any of the related preferences (browser.urlbar.restrict.history, browser.urlbar.restrict.bookmark, browser.urlbar.restrict.tag, browser.urlbar.match.title, browser.urlbar.match.url) to blank values to apply the restrictions by default (without entering any special character).

This location bar restrictions were considered for Firefox 3 but the performance hit along with time constraints had it postponed for the next iteration. It’s still to be decided if there will be any user interface (possibly in Options(Preferences)/Privacy) to make these options discoverable.

For more details you can check this Edward Lee’s post on the matter. He is the developer largely responsible for this implementation.

Another visible enhancement is the new behavior for the Ctrl + Tab hotkey: instead of switching to the next tab to the right as before, it raises a small overlay with tab thumbnails. Since they are ordered with the most recently viewed first, you can press Ctrl + Tab successively to switch between the current and previous tabs, a handy shortcut for accessing a reference page while composing in another.

By default, only three thumbnails are shown but you can customize it by setting browser.ctrlTab.previewsCount (via about:config) to the desired value and restarting Firefox. I found 5 to be a more useful value.

You can disable the feature altogether setting browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed to false and get the old Ctrl+Tab behavior. Ctrl + PgUp and Ctrl + PgDown still provide the classic tab navigation.

Alpha 1 gets much better results in the Acid3 test, a benchmark of web standards support that, as opposed to previous acid test versions, not only assesses CSS compliance but also DOM capabilities and performance. As of this release, Shiretoko scores an 84, an 18% gain compared to Firefox 3’s but still behind WebKit nightlies that already score a perfect 100.

There’s still plenty to come including native audio and video support, possibly font download, one click autologin option for sites where a single set of credentials is available, private browsing, cross site AJAX requests (pulled back from Firefox 3 after late changes to the specification), bulk tagging, tag autocomplete, the possibility to enable color management support (introduced with Firefox 3) by default.

Let’s wait and see what gets in by the next milestone, which according to an early schedule draft, should be a first beta sometime in August.

More details Mozilla Developer News.

But, as usual I’ve waited ’til the very last moment to share this with you (I’m at Philadelphia waiting for my 6 hours connection to Vancouver, after a 4 hours ride from San Juan, Puerto Rico), but hopefully I will be able to share some of the experience of talking about the future of Mozilla and even a release with you all, as Firefox 3.1 alpha 1 is expected to be released tomorrow, driven by Mike Beltzner, directly from Whistler.

So, what do you want to know? If you’ve ever wished to be there at some Mozilla event to learn or ask someting please let me know and I’ll do my best to get it for you.

Mari, Percy, and Cami, I already miss you! :(

From People to Cosmopolitan to The New York Time’s fashion section, it comes with a thick bundle of fashion, health, and gossip links and feeds framed in a girlish lavender theme to please fashion lovers cravings (well almost).

This edition follows Flock Eco Edition, released on April to celebrate Earth’s Day, which also featured a number of environmental web sites bookmarks and a green theme.

Gloss Edition is based on the current Flock 1.2.4 and available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The next major update, Flock 2.0 will be based on Firefox 3 code and is currently in Beta 2 stage.

Flock 2 beta 2 is based on Firefox 3 (3.0.1 actually) code base bringing along all the performance improvements and new features including Places, tagging, malware protection, the new location bar, web content and protocol handlers among others.

Other features include an option to manually update a web feed or group of web feeds and notifications when one is updated.

Revver has also been added as a supported media feed provider you can search, search, and subscribe to.

Flock 2 is expected to have a long development cycle according to Flock’s Marketing VP, Dan Burkhart.

You can download Flock 2 Beta 2 from Flock Beta site. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

The update includes fixes for three critical vulnerabilities including the one reported through TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative program, the same day Firefox 3 was released, that could lead to remote execution.

Another bug is related to GIF images handling on Mac OS X that could also lead to remote execution; while the third one would allow an attacker to launch Firefox with certain unfiltered chrome addresses .

You should be prompted to update in the next 48 hours but if you want to get it now, select Check for Updates… in the Help menu and follow the on-screen instructions.

Press Ctrl + Tab (or Shift + Ctrl + Tab) and you are presented with tab thumbnails and titles with the most recently visited ones first so you can more easily determine which tab you want to go, have the one you most probably want to go closer, and as a result get to it faster. Hold Ctrl pressed and keep pressing Tab to see the thumbnails smoothly scroll to the left while the status bar displays the tab web address.

If you need or just prefer the old behavior, pressing Ctrl + Page Up and Ctrl + Page Down will fit the bill.

While eye candy doesn’t hurt, I am not sure black is the right background color for all platforms. More tab thumbnails may also help find the one I’m looking for faster, as in earlier prototypes.

As said, there’s also a new behavior for Ctrl + Tab. Instead of just moving left to the next opened tab, now it switches between the current and the last viewed tab and I have to say I’m already loving it. I usually have to check several other pages while posting and to ease the tab switching I moved the reference tab next to the post edit tab to have it a couple of keystrokes away. There’s no need now: I just took the long way to the reference tab once and then it’s already at reach.

The new Ctrl + Tab behavior and look was originally planned for Firefox 3 but was put on hold due to time constraints.

Ctrl-Tab, a Firefox extension developed by Dão Gotwald, that has served as a prototype for this change is available from Mozilla Add-ons. The extension provides even more features including an all tabs preview with search tabs capabilities that replaces the tab list menus when pressing the List all tabs button in the tab bar edge, and an option to switch between tabs in all windows. At least the all tabs preview option is also being considered for inclusion in Firefox 3.1.

Links and Forms, a Firefox extension developed by Florian Queze, restores both pages to the Page Info dialog just as they were in Firefox 2 and previous versions.

You can get Links and Forms from Mozilla Add-ons. It’s still labeled as experimental so you will need a Mozilla Add-ons account to install it.

Thanks to CFox for the tip!

Bonus tip: If you use the Page Info dialog a lot, you may want to add a button to open it to the toolbar or bring the original Ctrl + I shortcut back. To get back both, install Page Info Button. Hope to see a status bar icon option soon.

Stephen Colbert: Believe me, I’m all in favor of scaring the shit out of public. But I don’t understand. You give me the tools to frighten them.

Johnathan Zittrain: I don’t mean to be too alarmist…

SC: Oh! No, no, no! Please!

JZ: But it’s true. If you visit the wrong web site with the wrong browser, that could be it.

SC: What’s the right browser?

JZ: Well, Firefox 3 was just released today.

SC: OK.

(Public applause)

JZ: You may want to give it a shot.

SC: Firefox 3 gets the Colbert bump.

(Public applause)

The Colbert bump, -sort of a small digg effect or being slashdotted- actually spiked Firefox 3 download rate for a few minutes, according to Mozilla’s Ken Kovash, based on in his analysis of Mozilla download logs.

To play, just select Your SUDOKUs sidebar from the View/Sidebars menu. Select a puzzle from the sidebar and click on >> to open it in a new tab. To place a number, you click on it from the bottom number bar and then on an empty space. The selected number will be highlighted on the board to help you avoid errors. If you’re not sure, right click to place the number as a hint instead.

It helps identify errors like a number repeated in the same column, row or square, highlighting them all as soon as you place the duplicate.

Sudoku ships with 65 puzzles (40 easy, 5 medium and 20 hard), but one of its main features is the ability to grab other puzzles from well known sudoku web sites including WebSudoku, Sudoku Puzzles,  Sudoku online, and a few others.

You simply visit the site and Sudoku will detect the puzzle and prompt whether you want to play it now with the enhanced interface ir provides or save it to play it later. Saved puzzles are stored in the Unrated category.

An option to pause a puzzle and continue it later is planned and will be very welcomed. I would also like to see thumbnails of the puzzles as a the mouse cursor passes over them in the sidebar and a way to turn off the tips displayed at the bottom.

Sudoku is a very nice extension, with some rough edges still there. But minor bugs aside, what it needs is some eye candy to make it more enjoyable and playful.

sudoku 0.9 is available from Mozilla Add-ons as an experimental extension so you will need a Mozilla Add-ons account to access and install it.

1. Duplicate tabs. Press Ctrl while dragging a tab to create a duplicate of the dragged tab including its history. Note that this feature doesn’t work on Mac.
2. Move tabs to another window. Just drag a tab and drop it on another window to move it. If the dragged tab is the last one in its window, it will be closed.
3. Resize the search bar. When the search bar is placed next to the location bar, you can drag the handler between them (invisible on Windows and Linux) to resize it.
4. Add keyword search. Select Manage Search Engines… in the search engines menu to open the Search Engines Manager, select a search engine, press Edit Keyword… and enter a few characters to define one. Now you can enter the keyword followed by your search terms in the location bar to search with that plugin.
5. Discontinuous selections. Make a selection with the mouse as you usually do. Then press and hold the Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) key to make additional selections and create a larger discontinuous one so you can copy or print just what you need.
6. Integrated add-ons. No need to visit Mozilla Add-ons because Firefox 3 brings it to you directly from the Add-ons Manager new Get Add-ons page: search, find and install with a single click.
7. Disable plugins. Crashing? It may be a plugin. To be sure, disable the suspect through the new Plugins page in the Add-ons Manager.
8. Check your crashes. Enter about:crashes in the location bar to get a list of crashes submitted by Breakpad (Mozilla’s crash reporter). Click on a crash report to get details provided by Socorro, Mozilla’s crash reports server.

If you are feeling envious of what the other platform or style got or just want to try a different look and have a couple of minutes to spare, you may want to give these themes a try.

Vista on XP, is a theme by Pascal Herbert that lets you use the Windows Vista theme, which is pretty much like the XP theme except all main navigation bar icons are blue and glassy instead of plastic-y.

If you prefer XP’s green plastic, try XP on Vista by the same author.

MacOS X Theme, created by GOLF-AT, brings Firelight’s brushed metal to users in Linux and Windows platforms. You will need a Mozilla Add-ons account though, as it is labeled experimental and awaiting further reviews.

Finally, if you don’t like change and believe Firefox 2 theme was just perfect, there’s also a theme for you: Firefox 2 for Firefox 3 will make you feel as it is 2006 again, yellow location bar for secure sites included.

Enjoy!

You can take advantage of Firefox 3’s support for web-based protocol handling to make it your default IRC client and handle irc:// links whenever you found one.

Mibbit added the necessary interface short before Firefox 3 final release and I’ve proposed it to be included with Firefox by default. But you can add it right now.

First, you will have to enable registration of protocol web handlers from different domains.

• Enter about:config in the location bar and press Enter to access the advanced preferences.
• Look for gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost and double click it to set it to true.

Now click in the link below to add Mibbit as an irc: links handler.

Add Mibbit as an IRC handler

You will be prompted with a confirmation info bar. Press Add Application.

You can now select Mibbit as your irc:// links handler from the Application page in the Options dialog.

Now when you click on irc: links a new tab with Mibbit and a tab connected to the IRC server and channel.

I suggest setting gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost back to false to prevent malicious web sites offering their own protocol handlers.

In case you need to remove Mibbit as an irc:// handler, go back to the Applications page in the Options dialog. Look for irc in the content type column. Open the menu in the Action column and select Application Details…, select Mibbit and press Remove.

Firefox 3 ships with Yahoo! Mail and 30Boxes as bundled web protocol handlers (for email and calendars respectively) but you can easily add more as they become available.

Google for example added the necessary interface too short before the Firefox 3 release so it wasn’t included by default but you can change that.

First, you will have to enable registration of protocol web handlers from different domains.

• Enter about:config in the location bar and press Enter to access the advanced preferences.
• Look for gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost and double click it to set it to true.

Now click in the link below to add Gmail as a mailto: links handler.

Add Gmail as a mailto handler

You will be prompted with a confirmation info bar. Press Add Application.

You can now select Gmail as your mailto links handler from the Application page in the Options dialog.

Now when you click on mailto: links a new tab with a Gmail compose window will open. You can also or click on Send Link… in the File menu to send the current page address and title.

I suggest setting gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost back to false to prevent malicious web sites offering their own protocol handlers.

In case you need to remove Gmail as a mailto handler, in the Tools menu, select Options. In the  Applications page look for mailto in the content type column. Open the menu in the Action column and select Application Details…, select Gmail and press Remove.

Update: If clicking on the link to add Gmail still doesn’t work, access the advanced preferences (enter about:config in the location bar) and check that network.protocol-handler.external.mailto is set to true, its default value. If it isn’t double click on it to change it or right-click and select Reset.

There is also a simplified version to be used when a very small size is required.

Both versions were created by Nobox, the design firm responsible for the Firefox 3 robot, Operation Firefox, Firefox Campus Edition and other Firefox-related art.

John Slater, Mozilla Creative Director, notes that this logo “has nothing do to with the final Firefox Mobile branding” in the announcement post.

Fennec recently reached Milestone 4 with builds available for Nokia’s N800 and N810 Internet tablets and is expected to go final by year’s end.

Using Pencil is pretty straight forward. You start with a new document and just start adding widgetsfrom the toolbar to the canvas. It includes a variety of basic elements like windows, menus, tables, progress bars, checkboxes, buttons, radio buttons, etc. as well as basic annotation tools like text, images, and arrows, to add comments.

You can also add images but be aware that by default Pencil will just link to the file instead of embedding the image data in the document, so if you delete the source it will be gone from the prototype as well. You can embed the actual image by pasting it but Duong warns thatit may affect performance.

A document can have multiple pages each with a different prototype so you a document can hold a full project. Objects can be easily aligned, organized, grouped and locked to prevent accidentally moving or modifying a finished one.

As a first release there are things missing, like more annotation elements including more arrow types and shapes, an option for adding comments as object properties instead of a visual element. Some widgets like tables and combo boxes could get a little smarter and allow entering multiple values instead of adding a lot of text boxes. Mac OS X and Windows Vista native widgets would also be a big a plus for a next version as well as an option to organize the document pages in folders or at least an option to tag and search them.

For some reason Pencil made accessing advanced preference (though about:config in the location bar) generate an error. It could be related to an Advanced Settings… item in Pencil’s menu that launches the advanced preferences. Disabling Pencil brought about:config back.

Anyway, it felt pretty solid specially for a first release and looks like a keeper for me and those times I need to make a mockup.

Pencil is available as a 390 KB Firefox 3 extension or an 8MB XULRunner based stand-alone application for Windows and Linux only at this time. You can get it from the Pencil project web site.

The Official Mozilla Blog mentions 8,002,530 people downloading Firefox 3, but I guess it must be a typo since the record is about number of downloads which can’t be easily translated to number of people.

Anyway, the record has been set and Guinness will present the World Record certificate next week in London.

Updates should be pushed in the next 24 hours but if you want it right now, select Check for Updates… in Firefox’s Help menu. If you need the full Firefox 2 download, check Mozilla’s old versions page.

Remember that Firefox 3 is the current version and according to Mozilla support policies, the Firefox 2 branch will get updates until around mid-December, six months after the current version release.

It should be noted that none of these vulnerabilities are present in Firefox 3. Nine of them were already fixed before final release and three of them don’t affect it because of changes to how related features internally work (page reflow, certificate handling and file uploading).

Firefox 3 is already on its own maintenance cycle with the first update, Firefox 3.0.1 (Mozilla has changed to three digit versioning with Firefox 3), targeted for mid-July, most likely to coincide with another Firefox 2 update.

You can get this desktop wallpaper available in a variety of resolutions, with or without calendars from Foxkeh’s blog.

The extension is based on Apple’s PDFKit program interface and includes options to zoom in, out, autoadjust and view several pages at a time, but no thumbnails so far. A very handy tool to add to your extension belt.

Firefox PDF Plugin is not yet available on Mozilla Add-ons but you can install it from its Google Code web site.

Via Fredericiana.

What do you want to see available next at the Mozilla Store? A $10 Firefox-themed laptop skin? A $15 Mozilla themed Rubik’s cube featuring the Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino and other logos? What about a $17 Firefox logo frisbee? Or an ultra-cool $35 flash drive featuring the Firefox 3 robot?

I’m all for the Rubik’s cube but hope the robot gets one of the faces. $35 for a 1GB flash drive seems steep even for a Firefox 3 robot flash drive. Unless there is a 4GB Corsair Survivor under the hood.

Head over now to the latest Mozilla Store poll and get what you want. It only runs until tomorrow June 24 11:59pm PST.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Firefox 3 T-shirt is already available for chicos y chicas.

Today, Illiad is back on it with a reference to Firefox 3 download record.

Check UserFriendly.org for more smiles and better resolution images.

Via Al Billings’blog.