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Dec-2008
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Will Mozilla's Fennec Mobile Browser Be a 2009 Hit?

Back in November, we took note of the progress that Mozilla has made in ramping up its Fennec mobile browser.? Now, Fennec is available in an Alpha 2 test version for Windows, the Mac and Linux desktop users. Yes, it's a strange concept to test a mobile browser on desktop systems, but that's how Mozilla will leverage the largest possible community behind Fennec. Quite a few reports are coming in about how Fennec's interface works, and, although I intend to wait to use it in a more stable version, I'm very encouraged by what the earliest testers are saying. Could this open source project redefine how people think about mobile browsing?


No #!@&! Documentation?...More OSS Tutorials Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Linux.com has an interesting item up today on FLOSS Manuals,an effort to produce comprehensive, free documentation for popular open source software titles. As the post notes, documentation is one area in which free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) is weakest. That's true, and FLOSS Manuals looks like an excellent learning and reference resource for titles such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Audacity, Blender, Inkscape and more. Here are some of the details on what's available there, and 16 other open source learning and tutorial resources that we've compiled.


Mozilla CEO Confirms "Complicated" Relationship with Google, Since Chrome

Last week, I did a post called Google and Chrome: How Much Does the Company Really Care About Firefox? in which I noted that Google removed Firefox as the default browser from its Google Pack collection of applications, replacing it with its own Chrome open source browser. As many people have noted, Mozilla gets most of its revenues--about 60 million dollars last year--from Google, in exchange for making Google the default search engine in Firefox and click-throughs on advertisements. Although that arrangement is protected through 2011, Mozilla's CEO John Lilly has now confirmed that his company's ties with Google are complicated with the arrival of Chrome.


The Open Source Crystal Ball

The end of the year is a self-indulgent time, when those who write about technology stop making lists of the best, worst, and most mind-numbingly mediocre applications they find and pause to make lists about tech trends in the upcoming year.

Assessing the past is easy: it has been an interesting year for open source software. Predictions that come to pass, unless suitably vague, just fall into the lucky guess category. The one prediction I am sure of for 2009: Open source software will hold its own when it comes to growth and adoption.

My other predictions? What do you think?



OpenItOnline: A Firefox Extension for Quickly Viewing Files Using Web Apps

Here is an interesting Firefox extension if you open documents and spreadsheets frequently in online hosted applications such as Google's, Zoho's or ThinkFree: OpenItOnline. (Hat tip to DownloadSquad for calling this one out.)? You can install this extension in a minute or so, and create file type associations that will default to the online applications you specify to open files. This saves you from, say, having to install Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer, or another application to open a .doc file, or a standalone image viewer to look at an image. Here's a peek at how it works.


25 Free, Game Changing Open Source Resources

OStatic has recently been enjoying some very healthy traffic and growth, and I'd like to thank all of the members, readers and writers who make our site and this blog lively every day. It's a labor of love. One of our main charters on the OStatic blog is to regularly provide roundups and individual reviews of good open source software, tools and resources. We've done quite a few of these since our last uber-roundup, so here is an updated collection of 25 of our most popular roundups and educational resources for open sourcerors. We hope these help you.

 



Google and Chrome: How Much Does the Company Really Care About Firefox?

Ever since Google unveiled its open source Chrome browser, I and others have been wondering what its stance toward Mozilla Firefox will be going forward. Firefox, of course, has proven to be the little engine that could among really ubiquitous open source applications, with more than 20 percent market share now. Firefox has also been subsidized by Google for years, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and Google recently pledged to continue that funding through 2011. Still, there are some signs that Google's long-term plan may be to promote Chrome at what could be the expense of Firefox. Is Firefox's future in peril?


Google Chrome's Kimono Opened--A Little

Stephen Shankland from CNet has an interesting item up today about the very first non-Google coder getting an invitation to add code directly to the open source browser project. In a blog post, Evan Martin, a software engineer at Google, nominates University of Warsaw computer science student Pawel Hajdan Jr. to move from contributor --submitting patches and the like to the Chrome team--to committer, working directly on the browser's code. The nomination provides a glimpse of how high-profile open source projects truly treat openness.


Mac Laptop Users Get Multi-Touch Firefox Interface

TheAppleBlog has a good piece up on how users of the latest Apple laptops (including the MacBook Air, and late 2008 MacBook/Macbook Pro) have access to a radically different interface in Firefox than they're used to. The latest beta version of Firefox for Mac includes support for multi-touch gestures similar to those that iPhone users are used to, and the upcoming final release of Firefox 3.1 is slated to have them too. Users can Swipe Left to go back in browsing history, Swipe Up to go to the top of a page, and more. Check out the details.


Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Available For Testing

On Monday, the Mozilla team announced the general availability of Firefox 3.1 beta 2 for testing. Aside from increased localization support, a new Private Browsing mode, new tab switching and preview behaviors, and support for a number of new web technologies (such as the W3C Geolocation API and offline applications), the new beta release uses the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine by default, and has made tweaks to the Gecko engine to speed content rendering.



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