OStatic

We've written before about Foxmarks, which recently went through a name change to Xmarks. Though it now works with several browsers, it was popularized as a Firefox extension used by many mobile users who want to synchronize their bookmarks and profiles across devices. Good as it is, I also like to use MozBackup--another Firefox extension--for backing up profiles and many similar tasks. MozBackup is compatible with a slew of browsers, and lets you back up and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache and more. Here's what you get with it.

Over the past few years, implementing security properly has become a big issue for software applications of all stripes, including open source applications and platforms. That's why I noted with interest a couple of blog posts on the topic from leaders behind two high-profile open source projects: Firefox and Drupal. In a piece called Learning From Mozilla Security on InternetNews, Jonathan Nightingale of Mozilla's security team, who has the title Human Shield, provides some instructive examples of the lengths Mozilla goes to to keep Firefox secure (and security is the reason some people use the browser). Meanwhile, Dries Buytaert, founder of the open source Drupal content management system, has a post up on strategic steps he wants to put in place for a security team to police Drupal and its many modules.?

Mozilla has finally released Beta 4 of Firefox 3.5 (formerly called Firefox 3.1), and this beta is fast and stable enough that I'm using it as my primary browser. You can download it here. As we've noted several times, TraceMonkey technology for faster Javascript performance has been one of Mozilla's goals with this browser since the beginning, and it's in place in this beta. Beta 4 is very fast, and it includes Private Browsing Mode, and Location Aware Browsing, for the growing number of geo-location based applications that are arriving. Here's more on what you get and don't get in Beta 4.

Google is out with an open source browser plugin called O3D that provides a JavaScript API for building and displaying accelerated, rich, interactive 3D applications directly within browsers. There is a demo video available here showing surprisingly good 3D graphics running on a Mac, and the plug-in works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. In this blog post, Google makes clear that it is pushing O3D as a conversation starting point for an open web standard for 3D graphics. Mozilla is working on open source efforts in the same space, and some surprises could come quickly from these efforts.

Here at OStatic, we've often covered the most useful extensions for Mozilla's Firefox browser. The extensions, of course, are what make it such a compelling browser to use. There has been a general trend among Firefox extensions toward extending the way the browser helps you get more out of the applications that you use all the time. In this post, you'll find six of the best examples of these app-helper extensions, which you can grab and install in minutes. Whether you use Google, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, applications on mobile devices, or popular development tools, you'll find top-notch, efficiency-boosting extensions here.

Lifehacker is out with its 2009 Edition of its annual Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions post. This year's list is pretty good, and has contributions from a number of the folks who post on Lifehacker. There are some older extensions on the list, and some new ones. Here are some thoughts on their favorites, and a few extensions we think should be there.

Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, has been running a series of posts on how providers of Internet browsers should approach standards on the web, and how they should approach competition with other browsers. In her latest installment, she notes that one point she has made in the series of posts has received more criticism than any other from readers: IE must comply with web standards. The ongoing drag on the web?s functionality caused by IE?s limitations remains an enormous problem, she writes. Is Microsoft holding the web back?

Ubiquity is a very popular Firefox extension that adds a flexible natural language command line to Firefox, and is developed by the folks at Mozilla. It's now out in a more useful new version, with a sleeker look, a more stable core, and the ability to create good looking skins, as we covered here. If you're familiar with using the Awesome Bar in Firefox, it's easy to take to Ubiquity quickly, although it pays to spend a little time learning how its commands work. Now, Mozilla is working aggressively to bring some of Ubiquity's power to Firefox, and has come up with a prototype and demo of how TaskFox (Ubiquity's features running natively in Firefox) will work.

Here is yet another post arguing that open source software introduces a pricing race to zero that threatens the entire software industry, especially commercial efforts within it. It's from Gene Quinn, a patent attorney, writing for IP Watchdog. Dana Blankenhorn has an interesting reaction post up, in which he argues that open source doesn't drive all costs to zero, but that costs become shared. I agree with Blankenhorn, but there are several other fundamental problems with Quinn's argument.