David Walsh tells about Firefox 3's internal rendering CSS in his blog.He writes the following:

«I was poking around Firefox's file and folder structure today. I've been doing research on how each browser vendor chooses to render CSS and, more specifically, what their default CSS stylesheet looks like. After a few minutes, I found a "html.css" file in the "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\res" directory.»

Source: David Walsh Blog.

Richard Wong post an article in which he describes following four FireFox Plugins that can enchance FireBug features:

• Jiffy

• Yslow

• FireCookie

• FirePHP

Andrew Rowls post an article about his first expression from using the new version of Firefox on Linux. He writes:

«I've been using the latest version of FireFox 2 (version 2.0.0.14) since it hit the Ubuntu repos. On June 27, I decided to upgrade to 3.0 final. I didn't want to, really, until certain addons (not to mention my absolute favorite FF2 theme) had been upgraded with 3.0 compatibility. But FF2 was being so slow with the "memory leaks" that it's become known for lately, I figured I owed it to myself to try it.

First, the deal breakers for me. Obviously, the Vista Black theme by Internauta2000 on DeviantArt. I've loved this theme since I first discovered it, and haven't been satisfied with any other theme I've tried. My most used extension recently, Tab Groups, does one thing and does it well. It simply adds a second row of tabs that group main tabs together. Unfortunately, it does not support FF3 yet. And I can't wait until it does.»

Source: TechKnack.

FireFox 3 is out! Here's the excerpt from the official announce:in which Firefox 3 developers tells about main improvments:

«Performance. Firefox 3 is built on top of the powerful new Gecko 1.9 platform, resulting in a safer, easier to use and more personal product. Firefox 3 now uses less memory while it’s running, and its redesigned page rendering and layout engine means users see Web pages two to three times faster than Firefox 2.

Security. Firefox 3 raises the bar for security. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the Web. Firefox 3’s one-click site ID information allows users to verify that a site is what it claims to be. Mozilla’s open source process leverages the experience of thousands of security experts around the globe.

Customization. Everyone uses the Web differently, and Firefox 3 lets users customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons. Firefox Add-ons allow users to manage tasks like participating in online auctions, uploading digital photos, seeing the weather forecasts, and listening to music, all from the convenience of the browser. The new Add-ons Manager helps users to find and install add-ons directly from the browser.»

You can downlad Firefox 3 from http://www.getfirefox.com.

Source: Mozilla

Ryan Paul post a new article abou upcomin FireFox 3 release and future Mozilla's plans. He writes:
«Mozilla has announced that June 17 is the official date of the much-anticipated Firefox 3 release. Developers and open source software enthusiasts are planning parties all over the world to celebrate the occasion. I'll be covering the release from Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View at the official Camp Firefox event.

Firefox 3 beta 5 released

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera

A tantalizing taste of Firefox 3: testing RC1

When in Rome: engineering the Firefox 3 user experience

Mozilla is encouraging users to participate, too, by helping the Firefox team set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. The total number of unique downloads that take place on release day will be submitted for potential inclusion in the Guinness World Records. Over a million users have already signed up to pledge their support.»

Source: ars technica.

There is an intresting article about most useful developers plugins for FireFox browser on Dev102.com site. Author describes following five plugins:

• GreaseMonkey

• ColorZilla

• Poster

• JavaScript debugger

• X-Ray

Source: Dev102.com.

First beta of Firebug 1.2 is out. This version has some new features and improved speed. Also it compatible with Firefox 3 RC1. You can read more and download the new beta from Firebug official site.

Ryan Paul reviews the changes in the last release candidate of the Firefox 3 browser. He writes the followings:

«Mozilla has issued the first official release candidate of Firefox 3, the next major version of the popular open source web browser. Firefox 3 includes a visual refresh as well as a multitude of exciting new features and significant improvements. Our experience indicates that this release candidate is fairly robust and ready for widespread testing.

One of the most impressive features in Firefox 3 is the new Places system, a massive overhaul of the browser's bookmark and history functionality that is built on SQLite and provides noticeable improvements to performance and data integrity. The Places system has facilitated a number of very compelling user interface enhancements, like the new combined history and bookmarks organizer and an impressively intelligent new autocompletion implementation for the browser address bar.»

Source: Ars Technica.

There is a intresting tutorial posted on IBM developerWorks site about creating dynamic Firefox user interfaces. This tutorial covering the following topics:

• Define a skeleton user interface that populates dynamically.

• Use Ajax to download XML data into Firefox.

• Use XSLT to create XUL elements that you then add to the application.

John Resig continue exploring the new features of Firefox 3 browser. This time he post about Cross-Site XMLHttpRequest. He write following

«In a nutshell, there are two techniques that you can use to achieve your desired cross-site-request result: Specifying a special Access-Control header for your content or including an access-control processing instruction in your XML.»

FUEL 0.1  shipped with Firefox starting with 1.9a5 version.

You can check it on the it's home page

Also you can check progress(development of the FUEL 0.2) and some examples of usage  on the John Resig post

Scott MacGregor of Team Thunderbird writes in with news of the release of Mozilla Thunderbird 2: "Thunderbird 2 is now available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux in over 35 languages. Thunderbird 2 offers easy ways to manage and organize your email with message tags, advanced folder views, message history navigation, find as you type, and improved new mail alert notifications. Thunderbird 2 also includes a refreshed user interface and support for Microsoft Vista.

lientLeft and clientTop are now supported.

These two properties have long been a part of Internet Explorer and are now making their way into Firefox. This is to complement the clientHeight and clientWidth properties that already exist.

What these properties provide can be best described through a diagram; luckily, the Mozilla Developers Wiki already has some nice ones, so I'm just going to repost them here:

clientLeft

clientTop

While they're not terribly exciting properties to have, it's good to finally have a full set to work with.

You can hide cookies from scripts.

This one might seem rather innocuous, at first, but is a huge win in the Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) war. More often, than not, the true reward for performing some form of XSS is snagging valuable session information from a user's cookies. This relies on the fact that client-side JavaScript is able to access all of the cookies set and sent by the server. However, this is no longer the case. An HttpOnly flag, proposed and implemented by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 6, is now available in Firefox 3.0. A server, when setting a new cookie, can include the HttpOnly flag and know that the JavaScript won't have access to it. Of course, this isn't completely effective until all browsers have this property implemented, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Example:

Set-Cookie: sessionid=1234567; domain=mozilla.org; HttpOnly

You can mark resources as being available offline.

This is an interesting feature that doesn't, yet, have a specification-home (although, some suspect that it'll be adopted by the WHATWG). It provides the ability, for the user, to specify individual resources for special caching, should the browser move into offline mode.

In my personal tests, I was able to get it such that an XML file, specified exclusively as an "Offline Resource", was able to be retrieved, using an XMLHttpRequest, even while being disconnected from the Internet. You can view a demo here (Make sure that you're running, at least Firefox 3.0a3.) The relevant code, from the test page, is as follows:

Firebug 1.0 hit the wires at Mozilla on Wednesday night and Firebug??Ts author Joe Hewitt of Parakey Inc. stopped by Yahoo! Thursday to debut the new features.

Joe Hewitt has been busy. We have loved the private builds of Firebug 1.0 beta, and he just made a bunch of announcements:

• Firebug is to remain free: Very generous indeed. If you would like to support development, still check out the donate button. Joe wants to be able to hire someone to keep the torch well and truly light as he focuses on Parakey.
• Firebug 1.0 beta available to all: I can not tease people in the coffee shop any longer as I watch them using 0.x and then show them 1.0 beta.
• Firebug Lite: The lite version is for IE, Safari, and all non-Fire-y browsers. If you want to have the other browsers play happy with console.log() then use:
  
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