OStatic

Just last Thursday, I wrote a post proclaiming my undying love for how quickly open source projects tend to right themselves when sailing the choppy waters of software vulnerabilities. This time around, a vulnerability had been spotted in Firefox, affecting 3.x releases on all platforms. The fix was scheduled for release sometime this week, in the browser's 3.0.8 version.

Firefox 3.0.8 made an early arrival, however, and was officially released Friday afternoon (at 3:45 PST). For those keeping score, this was roughly two days after one of the vulnerabilities it patches was discovered.

There are many reasons to love the open source approach. The events chronicled in an article on NetworkWorld surrounding an exploit affecting Firefox outlines, quite elegantly, how open code outwardly appears risky, and -- well, wide open -- and how that same quality generates faster fixes and stronger applications.

A security researcher discovered that Firefox is vulnerable to remote memory corruption, enabling attackers to execute malicious (or at least very much unauthorized) code within the context of the browser. While security researchers spend countless hours searching out bugs and vulnerabilities, it's not usually the case that the offending attack finds its way into the public eye. Yesterday, however, this little exploit was published on several security sites. The vulnerability affects Firefox versions 3.0 through 3.0.7, on all platforms. In less than 24 hours, developers issued a patch for the vulnerability, to be included in next week's 3.0.8 release.

Late last week, Sam took a close look at the rapidly changing browser landscape. In one of the posts linked therein, Keir Thomas speculates that Firefox may well have just given up the ghost, what with an alpha version of Chrome now being available for Linux (or, at the very least, Ubuntu).

I don't think it is, nor is it going to be, quite that easy. Firefox isn't without issue -- or momentum. And Chrome for Linux? In all reality, it doesn't exist, yet. Chrome may have a number of advantages over other browsers, including Firefox, on other platforms. But if it's still too early to call this fight on Windows, declaring the superior browser on Linux is pretty much a coin toss.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 now available. It has an improved Private Browsing Mode, the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, and more. Get it here.

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Adium gets its Twitter on in version 1.4. The great open source, multiprotocol Mac instant-messaging app is tackling solid Twitter functionality.

6 ways to connect Linux to the outside world that are not wireless, Bluetooth, or Ethernet. It can be done.

The ABC's of PHP. How to get started with it.

Songbird, Mozilla's cross-platform media player, got a nice update this week. Aside from a few great performance enhancements like reduced CPU usage during playback, a smaller Mac download size, and configurable library caching, this point release has some dandy new features as well.

I love the tabbed browsing feature in Firefox so much that it's not uncommon for me to have upwards of 20 open at a time. Unfortunately, several of them are often blank pages because I've forgotten where I was planning to go once I open them.

I've always wished that Firefox would intuitively know that if I highlight an address on a Web page and open a new tab, it's probably because I want to map it. Apparently, I'm not the only one longing for that feature. Mozilla is developing an extension that takes its best guesses about why you've opened a new tab in your Firefox browser.