The latest version of the Thunderbird 1.5 builds was released yesterday (March 1st). This update contains stability improvements and a couple of security fixes (one fix which is labeled as critical). Users who have not been presented with an upgrade offer should be able to upgrade via the Help Menu and selecting Check For Updates… If you can not or are getting an error when trying to upgrade, you can get the new version here.
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 Release Notes
News Source: mozillaZine
About a month ago I wrote about Windows XP Support Continuing until 2014. Tonight on CybertNet , Ryan pointed out that the Microsoft Support Lifecycle site indicates Microsoft will end support for Windows Vista Ultimate Edition in 2012.
Huh?! This does not make sense how can the older Windows XP be supported two years longer then the just released Windows Vista? Is this old information? Is Microsoft trying to see if we are paying attention? Or could it be an indication that there will be another Windows operating system (Vienna/Windows 7) by 2012? Not really sure what to think at this point, other than this is yet another reason for me not to get Windows Vista.
Not much to report from today’s Firefox 3 Status Meeting. Due to Blocker bugs, Places will NOT ship with Alpha 3 later this month. For those of you keeping track at home it has been nearly 10 months (April 28th) since Places was removed from the Firefox 2 development. Here was Mike Schroepfer’s reasoning from back in April 2006:
“Places is a complex and exciting feature which changes the way people use bookmarks, history, and navigate through their private space of the web. Rather than rush it to market - we’d prefer to spend the time it takes to get it right.”
One has to wonder if “spend the time it takes to get it right” would end up being another year? Now keep in mind, Places was in some of the earlier “pre-alpha” (nightly trunk) Firefox 3/Gran Paradiso builds until it was disabled on the trunk in late September for redesign. The next milestone after Alpha 3 is usually Beta 1 so may be places will be in Beta 1? At this point when and where is anyones guess.
Lots of news (mostly good) from today’s Weekly Update Meeting.
News Source: Mozilla Wiki >> WeeklyUpdates
This is a very useful extension in instances where you have a long link (which you don’t want to shorten) and limited space such as within tables, forums and blogs. Firefox won’t wrap links so you end up having to scroll horizontally or in the case of my blog, links in the comments occasionally run into neighboring sidebar. The extension will automatically wraps the link on to a second (or more) line without breaking the link.
Before installing this extension visit the test page and then again after installing the extension to see how it works.
Note: There is a “lite” version which is much smaller (6K) and does not have an options menu. I also discovered the “lite” version will break the WordPress Editor. I installed the full version and was going to disable wrapping while in the editor, but discovered the full version did not cause any issues.
Mr Tech’s Link Wrapper works with Fx 1.5.0.X, Fx 2.0.0.x and Fx 3.0a1 (can be force to work 3.0.a2 & 3.0.a3pre via about:config change extensions.checkCompatibility to false) and is about 29K.
Ever find your tab bar getting congested? Too many open tabs? Having to scroll (for those of you who have not Disabled Tab Overflow) to find the tab you want? Wish there was way to organize (group) your tabs into folders? If you answered yes to any of these questions check out the Tab Groups extension. So, what does the Tab Groups extension do? Since it is a difficult concept for me to to try to explain I’ll quote the extension’s author:
Tab Groups is a firefox extension that lets a user organize tabs into groups, those groups in turn can be switched between through their own tab bar. This extension is aimed at power users who have many tabs open on different subjects at once so that organizing these tabs coherently can become difficult.
So far I have two groups (click images below for full-size), Main group which has non-blog related tabs and Blog group which has several WordPress tabs open and a couple tabs for items I want to blog. So now, all my tabs pertaining to my blog are in their own group now making them easier to find and navigate through.
Some notes/issues about Tab Groups:
Tab Groups works with Fx 2 (can be forced to work with Fx 3) and is about 9K.
Info Source: CyberNet News
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 3.5][Part 4][Part 4.5]
“The best laid plans of mice and men are usually about equal.” — Blair
Still more troubles trying to get the AMO done. The latest (2026/02/22) from the Mozilla Webdev Blog:
“As morgamic wrote on Friday, the Remora team have all had a long 9 days trying to get the new version of AMO out the door and make all its improvements available to our users. As we discovered to our chagrin, our performance testing on the stage environment did not really map well into real-world results, and the result was unacceptable load on the app cluster — unacceptable to the extent that pretty much everything that was sharing that database was killed by it, in fact.
It’s embarrassing and frustrating to miss deadlines (as I know from very extensive experience!), and painful to not be able to put your hard work out into the world where it can help people. The entire Remora team has been working almost literally around the clock for the last few weeks, and very hard for half a year before that, and we would like nothing in the world more than to deliver it to the world.
Well, one thing in the world that we’d like more: to be confident when we release it that it’s up to the daunting task of representing add-ons to many, many millions of Firefox users, and that it’ll be a release that we’re appropriately proud of. We’d rather be late than damage the world’s impression of Mozilla or add-ons, and we’d be doing a disservice to the exact users we’re working to help if we were to push it out before we were confident it was ready.”
So at this point it appears it is gong to be sometime still before the new (and improved?) Mozilla Add-ons site is ready. Now I suppose this may a be moot point right now, but I have noticed they have still not incorporate the “advanced search” functionality to the (preview) new add-ons site.
After several delays Mozilla surprised us today and released Firefox 1.5.0.10 and 2.0.0.2! You likely will not be presented with an update offer or via the Help >> Check for updates option until tomorrow. If you want to upgrade now, follow the links below to get Firefox directly from the download sites. Also see below for release notes. Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 has NOT been released yet, should know more about TB after next Monday’s Mozilla Weekly Update meeting.
Fx 1.5.0.X Users: Be advised support for these builds is ending in about 2 months (April 24th). Also, in the next 2-3 weeks you may be offered the Major Update to take you from 1.5.0.10 directly to the 2.0.0.2 build.
Windows Vista Users: Firefox 2.0.0.2 offers improved Vista support by fixing these bugs:
- Automatic Updates now works with users who have limited account privilege and User Account Control (UAC) enabled.
- Uses the Vista Default Application API which means Firefox should now be able to set itself as the default browser without having to be run as an administrator.
- Before Firefox would remain elevated (a.k.a. running as an administrator) after an update was performed, but that has been fixed.
Download Firefox
Release Notes
News Source: CyberNet News
A couple quick updates on the Add-ons Promotion. I now have four reviews in the contest:
- CoLT
- Download StatusBar
- Foxy Tunes
- Splash
The contest runs through April 9th and you no longer have to register for a Squidoo account to vote. Simply go to the Firefox Add-ons Review Contest site to see the reviews and cast your vote.
There are some extensions that I simply wonder how did I ever get along with out them? FoxyTunes is one of those extensions and by far the most used. Since I am always using WinAmp to listen to my music anytime I am using the computer (not just surfing the web), FoxyTunes makes things so much simpler. With FoxyTunes, you can control (right from the Firefox browser) virtually any music/media player including:
- WinAmp
- Real Player
- iTunes
- Windows Media Players
- Yahoo!Music Engine
- and many more (see the extension page for a complete listing)
Once installed and configured, FoxyTunes adds all the player controls on to the status bar (see picture below) or any toolbar. No more having to toggle away from Firefox to control your media player.
Click Image For Larger View
From left to right, Artist Name & Song Title, FoxyTunes Main Menu, Previous Track, Play, Pause, Stop, Next Track, on hover on note button (
) displays: Artist Name, Song Title, track elapsed time & total track time, Play File, Show Player, Hide Player and Mute. Not shown: Volume Control.
When you click the search (
) button to left of the Artist Name & Song Title you get a search menu which will allow you to search (in a new tab) various sites for the artist, album and song. For example searching for artist you can choose Wikipedia, All Music Guide, Amazon, YouTube, eBay and more.
Foxy Tunes is around 516 KB and works with the following applications:
- Firefox 1.5.0.-2.0.0.X
- Mozilla 1.6-1.8
- SeaMonkey 1.0
- Thunderbird 1.5-3.0a1
