NotesWe’re shipping a new API in Firefox Nightly that will let you use our Firefox AI runtime to run offline machine learning tasks in your web extension.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesConcluding, I think this is a very interesting way of working with AI inference in the browser. The obvious downside is that you need to convince your users to download an extension, but the obvious upside is that you possibly can save them from having to download a model they may already have downloaded and stored on their disk. FeedUnfurl
NotesExtension Auto-Installer is a helper for Firefox/SeaMonkey/Thunderbird extension developers: it allows automatically adding or updating browser extensions, e.g. via command line tools. This makes testing your changes easier.Unfurl
NotesWe are looking to demonstrate that Firefox OS can be a viable and valuable operating system for Raspberry Pi boards, and for the wide variety of use cases that are being imagined today by the Webmakers of tomorrowUnfurl
NotesIf you ever wondered what contributing to Firefox feels like but you never had the time to read and follow through our instructions to setup a build environment or wanted to avoid screwing around with your precious system then this might be for you.FeedUnfurl
NotesI’ve long privately thought that Firefox should treat feed reading as a first-class citizen of the open web, and integrate feed subscribing and reading more deeply into the browser (rather than the lame, useless live bookmarks.) The impending demise of Reader has finally forced me to spit out my thoughts on the issue. They’re less polished than I like when I blog these days, but here you go – may they inspire someone to resuscitate this important part of the open web.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesFirefox today reminds me of Firefox when I first discovered it. Mozilla has once again delivered a technically superior product while completely respecting my rights as a user. Firefox is freedom.Unfurl
NotesThis is an extended essay on the news out of Norway yesterday. See the closing for encouragement toward Opera and its fans, whatever the open source projects they choose to join, from me on behalf of Mozilla.FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes Introducing a new use for Firefox 3D view: Creating sculptures using DOM elements! For my first project using 3D view, I figured I'd take a skyscraper in Hashrocket Chicago's neighborhood and attempt to recreate it using DOM elements and absolute positioning. The resulting building ended up being inspired by the design of the John Hancock Center, but is not a scale replica by any means. Unfurl
NotesThis is an admittedly very simple example of a green screen but you can use this little template to manipulate your webcam’s live video stream and build all kinds of fancy demos with it.FeedUnfurl
NotesGiven technology's focus on the latest and greatest, it's easy to forget that much of this "latest and greatest" wouldn't even be possible without the work Mozilla did for years with Firefox. Or that dominating the browser market was never Mozilla's aim with Firefox.
Quixotic as it may sound, the purpose of Firefox was always to spread Web freedom.FeedUnfurl
NotesThere is a common misconception that every time a new release of Firefox comes out Mozilla claims “this is the one that fixes the memory consumption problems”. I see this misconception in action all the time.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThe Developer Toolbar provides a Graphical Command Line Interface (GCLI) to the Firefox developer tools and one click access to commonly used tools.Unfurl
NotesThe new native Android UI version of Firefox does not ship with a dedicated Error Console. Instead, all console messages are redirected to the Android system log – also known as logcat. If you have the Android SDK installed, you already have a way to view the logcat:FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes To do this, you need to enter about:config in Firefox's URL bar, then accept the warning when prompted. In the Filter box, type source.editor, which will show you three variables. Double-click on view_source.editor.external first, to change its Value to true. Next, double-click on view_source.editor.path, which will drop down a small sheet in which you enter the path to your preferred editor. The path must be a full complete Unix-style path, and point to the actual executable (not the app bundle). So for Coda, I used: Unfurl
NotesFireLogger is a server-side library, which provides logging function similar to Firebug's console.log. It sends logging events to client-side (encoded in HTTP headers).Unfurl
NotesThe easiest way to install a Sync Server is to checkout our repository and run a build in-place. Once this is done, Sync can be run behind and Web Server that supports the WSGI protocol.Unfurl
NotesMozilla is developing a push notification system for the Firefox Web browser. It will allow users to receive notifications from websites without having to keep those sites open in their browser. The system will also be able to relay push notifications to mobile devices.Unfurl
NotesPush notifications are a way for websites to send small messages to users when the user is not on the site. iOS and Android devices already support their own push notification services, but we want to make notifications available to the whole web. We’re making prototypes and designing the API right now and want to share our progress.FeedUnfurl
NotesThe first fruits of Mozilla’s attempt to make a Chrome OS-like Firefox operating system — Boot 2 Gecko — are now beginning to take shape in the Nightly builds of Firefox for Android. Dubbed “WebAPI,” these recent additions allow Firefox to access an Android device’s hardware through a JavaScript API. As of the latest Nightly, Firefox 11 for Android can now read the battery state, capture images from the camera, send SMSes, and trigger the vibrator motor.Unfurl
NotesThis makes me sad. And it's a problem that's been magnified by the switch to rapid release. One of the strengths of Firefox is it's rich selection of add-ons. In fact, 85% of Firefox users have chosen to install an add-on. On average, those users have 5 add-ons installed. Firefox users really love their add-ons. So it's not surprising that they get frustrated when one of their favorite add-ons gets disabled because it's not marked as being compatible with the new Firefox update they just installed.
So I started working on a project to fix it. The end result will be that most add-ons will automatically be compatible with Firefox, starting with (hopefully) Firefox 10.Unfurl
NotesIt’s been a month since Johnathan publicly announced the native UI for Firefox on Android. So it’s probably a good time to give everyone a quick status update. In case you haven’t heard about it yet, we are re-implementing Fennec’s UI using Android’s native platform to be able to deliver a much better performance and UX to our users on Android devices.FeedUnfurl
NotesIf Firefox is a bit slow to start up because of all your open tabs, you can turn on a quick setting in Firefox 8 to only load tabs one at a time, when you click on them. FeedUnfurl
NotesA couple of interesting things happened in the world of Web browser usage during October. The more significant one is that Internet Explorer's share of global browser usage dropped below 50 percent for the first time in more than a decade. Less significant, but also notable, is that Chrome for the first time overtook Firefox here at Ars, making it the technologist's browser of choice.Unfurl