The main changes of Firefox 3.0.9 are:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Many users experienced an issue where a corrupt local database caused Firefox to “lose” its stored cookies. (bug 470578)
• Fixed an issue where, starting with Firefox 3.0.7, inline image attachments on popular webmail services (like AOL and AIM) would not display. (bug 482659)
• Large forms would sometimes take a long time to submit. (bug 426991)
• In certain cases, new windows would not have proper focus. (bug 446568)

Links
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.9 announcement: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.9/releasenotes/;
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.9 complete changelog: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?keywords_type=anywords&keywords=fixed1.9.0.9+verified1.9.0.9.

Firefox 3.0.8 fixes the following two bugs:
485286: XSLT should heap allocate all evalContexts;
485217: Exploitable crash in [@txMozillaXSLTProcessor::TransformToDoc ].

Links
Mozilla Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/;
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 release notes: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.8/releasenotes/

One of the changes for example regards the Gecko layout engine with improvements in supporting Web standards like W3C Geolocation API, Java Script query selectors, and Web worker threads. Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 also includes support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties.

Regarding the interface, Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 will have a new tab switching shortcut and improved control over the smart bar.

While on the multimedia side Firefox 3.1 beta 1 will include the support for OGG Theora and OGG Vorbis on all platforms.
Firefox 3.1 beta 1 is currently available for download in more than 35 languages.

Links Firefox 3.1 Beta announcement: http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/10/14/firefox-31-beta-1-now-available-for-download/;
Firefox 3.1 Beta download: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html.

Firefox� 3.0.2 contains the following updates:

Fixed several security issues.

Fixed several stability issues.

Official releases for Sinhala and Slovene are now available.

Beta releases for Bengali, Galician, Hindi, Icelandic, Kannada, Marathi, Telegu, and Thai are available for testing.

Fixed a number of minor issues with the layout of certain web pages.

Fixed several theme issues that affected right-to-left locales.

Fixed issue that caused some users with customized toolbars to have their Back and Forward buttons go missing (bug 426026)

Add new Extended Validation (EV) roots to Firefox 3.0.2.

On certain IDN sites, the password manager would not fill in username and password details properly.

Fixed several hangs and crashes that occurred when using screen readers.

Fixed Mac-specific issues:

• Keyboard shortcuts would stop working in some cases.
• Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters can not be entered (using IME) into text fields in Flash objects (bug 357670)

Firefox 3.0.1 could not be used when the user profile is stored on an AFP directory (bug 417037)

Links
Mozilla Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/;
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.2 release notes: http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.2/releasenotes/

The first vulnerability, identified by Bach Koa Internetwork Security, is a buffer overflow that get triggered when a user saves a Web page containing a very long “title” tag. As usual when buffers overflow are exploited, an attacker could use it to inject malicious code to then have control of the victim’s computer.

The second vulnerability fixed is the “carpet bombing” flaw discovered by researcher Aviv Raff. The vulnerability is caused by the use of an outdated version of Apple WebKit by Chrome. The vulnerability causes Windows to download a dangerous Java archive file (JAR) and execute it without any warning to the users.

The vulnerable version released last week is the 0.2.149.27, while the new version is 0.2.149.29.

Links

Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome;

Bach Koa Internetwork Security’s advisory: http://security.bkis.vn/?p=119;

Aviv Raff’s advisory: http://aviv.raffon.net/2008/09/03/GoogleMule.aspx.

As it is an “alpha” version, this version is intended for developers and users who are willing to accept the experience of bugs and want to report them.

Even so, this alpha of Firefox 3.1 contains many nice features over the 3.0 version released recently:

• Support for the HTML 5 <video> element;
• Initial support for web worker threads;
• You can now drag and drop tabs between browser windows;
• Ability to make use of Aero “Glass” in XUL;
• Support for CSS 2.1 properties: ::before and ::after, and white-space:pre-line;
• Support for CSS 3 properties: -moz-border-image, word-wrap: break-word, text-shadow, box-shadow and column-rule;
• Performance improvements and new preference values for color management profile support.

Future test versions of Firefox 3.1 will also include some improvement in handling JavaScript, with the new JavaScript engine called “TraceMonkey”.

The alpha release of Firefox 3.1 can be downloaded from Mozilla’s Web site

Links

Mozilla announcement: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.1a2/releasenotes/.

According to Google, Chrome’s objective is not to be only a normal web browser, but a platform to better run Web Applications. In order to achieve that objective Google developed Chrome with strong support of JavaScript and AJAX.

One of the various changes that Chrome implements, compared to other browsers, is that each tab behaves as a separate browser with the bookmarks bar, address bar, the menus and the icons inside the tab. Also in Chrome the tabs are grouped by relation. If the user open a new tab from a link in an active page that new tab appears next to the originating page.

The address bar and the search bar are actually merged together in order to save space.

Obviously since Google Chrome is still in beta, it is has many features that are still to be implemented. For example Google Chrome lacks of an interface to manage the saved bookmarks. Chrome is also lacking a progress bar to show how much of a Web page has loaded.

At first only the Windows version is available, but Google is developing a open-source version for Linux.

Links

Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome.

The idea involves a forum open to everyone, regardless of their programming skills, where people can suggest ideas, point of views, comments, etc. for new software applications.

Mozillla did not stated what kind of suggestion it is seeking, but on the contrary it explicitly asked the people to open their creativity and post anything they would like to see in future products regardless of the feasibility.

The announcement has been made on Monday, August 04th on the Mozilla’s blog.

Links

Mozilla Labs: http://labs.mozilla.com/;

Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series: http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/concept-series/;

Mozilla Labs’ announcement: http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-the-concept-series-call-for-participation/.

Regarding the e-mail feature, Yahoo’s Zimbra will support not only Yahoo Mail, but� also AOL Mail Web and strangely Gmail, regardless it is a service provided by Yahoo’s greatest competitor. The other features will be based on the correspondent Yahoo’s services (like Yahoo! Calendar).

As stated the greatest feature of Zimbra is that it will cache all the data on the user’s computer, so it can be used even while off-line; of course the greatest benefit of this is that you can take advantage of the benefits of a standard application while you are at your computer and in the same time you can still access all the information while you travel. This is especially true for documents, managed by Zimbra Documents, that can be created and edited without switching between desktop programs or e-mailing them.

Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million in September 2007 in order to add Web 2.0 features to its traditional services.

Yahoo Zimbra Desktop Beta Version 3 can be downloaded for free from its site.

Links

Yahoo’s announcement: http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=324243;

Yahoo Zebra’s official site: http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop.html.

Firefox� 3.0.1 fixed several issues found in Firefox 3.

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Fixed an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch.
• Under certain circumstances, Firefox 3.0 did not properly save the SSL certificate exceptions list.
• Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
• In certain cases, installing Firefox 2 in the same directory in which Firefox 3 has been installed resulted in Firefox 2 being unstable. This issue was fixed as part of Firefox 2.0.0.15.
• Fixed an issue where, when printing a selected region of content from the middle of a page, some of the output was missing (bug 433373).
• Fixed a Linux issues where, for users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) Firefox always started in “Offline” mode (bug 424626).

Links
Mozilla Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/.