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Mozilla had to restart an effort to overhaul Firefox ’s extension technology, but the Jetpack reboot is steadily coming together. Mozilla has released five beta versions of the Jetpack Software Developer Kit, a package that puts a friendly face on Firefox’s inner workings so that extensions can do things such as open new tabs, add menu items, and modify Web pages. And the latest schedule was announced this week: its goal is to release Jetpack 1.0 by the end of 2010 . “We’ve been working on the SDK for almost a year now (and the Jetpack project as a whole for over a year), and we’ve done a bunch of great work that we should get into the hands of developers who could benefit from it,” said Mozilla Jetpack team member Myk Melez in a mailing list message. Jetpack takes a page from the Google Chrome playbook by letting programmers write extensions that use Web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript. That’s the same direction Apple went with its new Safari 5 extensions, too. In contrast, Firefox extensions today use the powerful but complicated XUL technology. Mozilla hopes Jetpack will bring more programmers by making it easier, increase extension compatibility from one Firefox release to the next, and help eliminate the need to restart Firefox when an extension is installed or updated. As Jetpack matures, the Web-based extension development tool called Flightdeck is growing more important for those who prefer its approach to the Jetpack SDK software running on their computers. “It is becoming increasingly clear that FlightDeck will be a key component in the success of the project, just as important as the SDK, and we should treat it as such, devoting the same kind of time and energy to planning and driving its development, designing its interface and capabilities, and developing its functionality,” Melez said in another mailing list message . Jetpack isn’t timed specifically to be released with Firefox 4, which brings better performance, a new user interface, and the new HTML5 parser . However, Jetpack is designed to take advantage of some new Firefox 4 features, Mozilla said. For a tentative look at what’s next for Jetpack, see the plans for Jetpack 0.6 , 0.7 , and 0.8 . One complication of Jetpack is that it integrates with Electrolysis, a Mozilla project to separate elements of Firefox into separate memory regions to help with performance and security. Jetpack extensions are designed to run in these separate partitions, but Electrolysis is a pretty deep and technical change to the browser’s development. The first Electrolysis element, out-of-process plug-ins, arrived last week with Firefox 3.6.4, but Mozilla quickly released the 3.6.6 update because older machines would show the Flash Player plug-in to have crashed when in fact a slower computer was just bogged down in processing. Five Filters featured article: Headshot – Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla . Available tools: PDF Newspaper , Full Text RSS , Term Extraction .

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Firefox’s Jetpack extensions get 2010 goal | Deep Tech – CNET News

This chart shows the changing usage of the five top browsers; the darker colors are from earlier and the lightest color shows percentages for June 2010. (Credit: data from Net Applications, chart by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Internet Explorer has reversed a years-long slide in browser usage, at least for the month of June, reclaiming share at the expense of Firefox . IE increased usage from 59.8 percent to 60.3 percent, according to new statistics from Net Applications , an analytics company that monitors browser usage across a large network Web sites. It was buoyed by increasing usage of IE8 that offset the decline in IE7–and by what Web developers no doubt hope will be only a temporary pause in the decline of the despised IE6. The change in fortunes was significant enough that Microsoft couldn’t resist crowing about IE’s progress in a blog post Thursday. “We certainly don’t judge our business on just two months of data, but the direction here is encouraging,” said Ryan Gavin, senior director of business and marketing for Internet Explorer. Although IE has long been scorned by Web developers for its out-of-date features and its lack of compliance with Web standards, Microsoft is working hard to change the browser’s image. The IE9 Platform Preview bare-bones browser prototypes , of which three have been released so far, are steadily accumulating modern features in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and JavaScript. And Windows, despite the browser ballot that in Europe presents Windows users with a choice of browsers besides IE as a result of an antitrust settlement, remains a powerful means of distributing the software. Some of IE8’s gains probably can be ascribed to the growing use of Windows 7 , which ships with that browser and is showing some signs of finally being a successor to Windows XP that people actually are embracing. Net Applications showed that the browsing usage of Windows 7 climbed from 12.7 percent to 13.7 percent from May to June; Windows Vista dropped from 15.2 percent to 14.7 percent; and Windows XP dropped from 62.6 percent to 62.4 percent. Meanwhile, IE’s biggest rival, Firefox, dropped in usage from 24.3 percent to 23.8 percent. And third-place Chrome climbed from 7.0 percent to 7.2 percent from May to June. In fourth place, Apple’s Safari rose from 4.8 percent to 4.9 percent, and Opera slipped from 2.4 percent to 2.3 percent. The browser battles are shifting in direction dramatically as mobile phones and devices such as the iPad extend Web usage well beyond PCs. And things are very different on mobile devices. Opera has years of experience on mobile devices, and indeed its Opera Mini version comes close to the regular computer version of Opera in terms of browser usage. Apple’s Safari works on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, and Apple at least partially bans other browsers. Mozilla is working on a mobile version of Firefox for Android and high-end Nokia phones and just submitted a tool to the Apple App Store it hopes will keep the desktop version of Firefox in sync with Apple iOS-based browsers. Google lets other browsers on devices with the Android operating system, but it comes with a browser as well. Five Filters featured article: Headshot – Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla . Available tools: PDF Newspaper , Full Text RSS , Term Extraction .

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IE reverses usage share slide; Microsoft cheers | Deep Tech – CNET News

Firefox has become the default browser for nearly 400,000 IBM employees, a big coup for the open-source project during a time of increasing browser competition. “All IBM employees will be asked to use it as their default browser,” Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux at IBM’s Software Group, said in a blog post Thursday . “Firefox is enterprise-ready, and we’re ready to adopt it for our enterprise.” Mozilla has said in recent weeks it believes nearly 400 million people use its software. In particular, IBM will load Firefox on new computers, train employees in its use, encourage vendors working with IBM to adopt it, and rely on the browser for its increasing use of cloud computing in its own IT infrastructure, he said. “Today we already have thousands of employees using it on Linux, Mac , and Windows laptops and desktops, but we’re going to be adding thousands more users to the rolls,” Sutor said. Sutor lavished praise on the browser’s role in recent history: “While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be,” he said. “I think it was Firefox and its growth that reinvigorated the browser market as well as the web. That is, Firefox forced competitors to respond. Their software has gotten better and we have all benefited.” Like Firefox, both Opera and Google’s Chrome browser also span Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, but Sutor said IBM is interested in Firefox’s independence. “Firefox is open source, and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity,” he said. The support from IBM might help nudge Firefox’s recently wavering share of browser usage in a more optimistic direction. Five Filters featured article: Headshot – Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla . Available tools: PDF Newspaper , Full Text RSS , Term Extraction .

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IBM names Firefox its default browser | Deep Tech – CNET News

Videos like “Apple of My Eye” will lead ordinary folks to buy premium tech gear–and some of those people will even create works of art.

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iPhone 4 video embodies new-tech aesthetic

Sure, HTML5 adds support for Web video that doesn’t need Flash. But there are many reasons Adobe’s plug-in still is necessary, YouTube says.

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YouTube: Why the Flash era isn’t over