An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla is reexamining and revamping the way it builds, communicates, and decides features for its browser. In short, big changes are coming to Firefox. Dave Camp, Firefox's director of engineering, sent out two lengthy emails, just three minutes apart: Three Pillars and Revisiting how we build Firefox. Both offer a lot more detail into what Mozilla is hoping to achieve.

An anonymous reader writes: Today Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 39.0, which brings an number of minor improvements to the open source browser. (Full release notes.) They've integrated Firefox Share with Firefox Hello, which means that users will be able to open video calls through links sent over social media. Internally, the browser dropped support for the insecure SSLv3 and disabled use of RC4 except where explicitly whitelisted. The SafeBrowsing malware detection now works for downloads on OS X and Linux. (Full list of security changes.) The Mac OS X version of Firefox is now running Project Silk, which makes animations and scrolling noticeably smoother. Developers now have access to the powerful Fetch API, which should provide a better interface for grabbing things over a network.

An anonymous reader writes: Last week, Mozilla updated Firefox to add Pocket integration — software that lets you save web articles to read later. Over the weekend, some Firefox users began to voice their displeasure over the move on public forums like Bugzilla, Google Groups, and Hacker News. The complaints center around Pocket being a proprietary third-party service, which already exists as an add-on, and is not a required component for a browser. Integrating Pocket directly into Firefox means it cannot be removed, only disabled. In response, Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration and the integration code is open source.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla's VR research team is hard at work making virtual reality native to the web. The group wants more than a few experimental VR-only websites, they want responsive VR websites that can adapt seamlessly between VR and non-VR, from mobile to desktop, built with HTML and CSS . Experimental work is already underway, and now the team says that they 'aim to have support for the WebVR API shipping with our release channel builds of Firefox Desktop by end of this year.' Those with the Oculus Rift developer kit can already try out a few native WebVR experiences using Firefox Nightly.

An anonymous reader writes: I've been using Google Chrome almost exclusively for more than 3 years. I stopped using Mozilla Firefox because it was becoming bloated and slow, and I migrated all my bookmarks etc. to Chrome. Now Chrome plans to end NPAPI support — which means that I will not be able to access any sites that use Java, and I need this for work. I tried going back to Firefox for a couple of days but it still seems slow — starting it takes time, even the time taken to load a page seems more than Chrome. So what are my options now? Export all my bookmarks and go back to Mozilla Firefox and just learn to live with the performance drop? Or can I tweak Firefox performance in any way? FWIW, I am on a Windows 7 machine at work.

An anonymous reader writes: When Mozilla developed Firefox OS, its goal was not to provide the best smartphone experience, but to provide a "good enough" smartphone experience for a very low price. Unfortunately, these cheap handsets failed to make a dent in the overall smartphone market, and the organization is now shifting its strategy to start producing a better experience for better devices. CEO Chris Beard said, "If you are going to try to play in that world, you need to offer something that is so valuable that people are willing to give up access to the broader ecosystem. In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Of course, when moving to the midrange smartphone market, or even the high end, there's still plenty of competition, so the new strategy may not work any better. However, they've hinted at plans to start supporting Android apps, which could help them play catch-up. Beard seems fixated on this new goal: "We won't allow ourselves to be distracted, and we won't expand to new segments until significant traction is demonstrated." He adds, "We will build products that feel like Mozilla."

An anonymous reader writes: Former Mozilla software engineer Monica Chew and Computer Science researcher Georgios Kontaxis recently released a paper (PDF) that examines Firefox's optional Tracking Protection feature. The duo found that with Tracking Protection enabled, the Alexa top 200 news sites saw a 67.5 percent reduction in the number of HTTP cookies set. Furthermore, performance benefits included a 44 percent median reduction in page load time and 39 percent reduction in data usage.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has announced plans to launch a feature called "Suggested Tiles," which will provide sponsored recommendations to visit certain websites when other websites show up in the user's new tab page. The tiles will begin to show up for beta channel users next week, and the company is asking for feedback. For testing purposes, users will only see Suggested Tiles "promoting Firefox for Android, Firefox Marketplace, and other Mozilla causes." It's not yet known what websites will show up on the tiles when the feature launches later this summer. The company says, "With Suggested Tiles, we want to show the world that it is possible to do relevant advertising and content recommendations while still respecting users’ privacy and giving them control over their data."

An anonymous reader writes: Adblock Plus has launched Adblock Browser for Android. Currently in beta, the company's first browser was created by taking the open source Firefox for Android and including Adblock Plus out-of-the-box. The Firefox Sync functionality is disabled, as is the ability to use other addons. "Adblock Plus for Android got kicked out of Google Play along with other ad blocking apps in March 2013, because Google’s developer distribution agreement states apps cannot interfere with the functionality of other apps. Williams thus believes Adblock Browser “should be fine” as it only blocks ads that are shown as you browse the Web."

An anonymous reader writes: A team of security researchers has revealed a new encryption vulnerability called 'Logjam,' which is the result of a flaw in the TLS protocol used to create encrypted connections. It affects servers supporting the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and it's caused by export restrictions mandated by the U.S. government during the Clinton administration. "Attackers with the ability to monitor the connection between an end user and a Diffie-Hellman-enabled server that supports the export cipher can inject a special payload into the traffic that downgrades encrypted connections to use extremely weak 512-bit key material. Using precomputed data prepared ahead of time, the attackers can then deduce the encryption key negotiated between the two parties."

Internet Explorer is the only browser yet updated to block such an attack — patches for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are expected soon. The researchers add, "Breaking the single, most common 1024-bit prime used by web servers would allow passive eavesdropping on connections to 18% of the Top 1 Million HTTPS domains. A second prime would allow passive decryption of connections to 66% of VPN servers and 26% of SSH servers. A close reading of published NSA leaks shows that the agency's attacks on VPNs are consistent with having achieved such a break." Here is their full technical report (PDF).

An anonymous reader writes: The first smart TVs powered by Firefox OS have gone on sale in Europe. Panasonic's line of Viera smart TVs includes six that are powered by Firefox OS — CR850, CR730, CX800, CX750, CX700 and CX680 — including their first curved LED LCD TV. The full global launch of the TVs is expected “in the coming months.” From the Mozilla blog: "We’re happy to partner with Panasonic to bring the first Smart TVs powered by Firefox OS to the world,” said Andreas Gal, Mozilla CTO. “With Firefox and Firefox OS powered devices, users can enjoy a custom and connected Web experience and take their favorite content (apps, videos, photos, websites) across devices without being locked into one proprietary ecosystem or brand.”

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 38 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include Digital Rights Management (DRM) tech for playing protected content in the HTML5 video tag on Windows, Ruby annotation support, and improved user interfaces on Android. Firefox 38 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Note that there is a separate download for Firefox 38 without the DRM support. Our anonymous reader adds links to the release notes for desktop and Android.

jones_supa writes: It's no secret that Internet Explorer has always been criticized for its poor security, so with the Edge web browser (previously known as Spartan), Microsoft is trying to tackle this problem more effectively and make sure that users consider it at least as good as Chrome and Firefox. In a blog post, Microsoft details the security enhancements available in Edge, pointing out that most of the changes it made to the new browser make it much more secure than Internet Explorer. There is more protection against trickery, app containers are used as the sandbox mechanism, and protection against memory corruption is better. Old, insecure plugin interfaces are not supported at all: VML, VBScript, Toolbars, BHOs, and ActiveX are all nuked from the orbit.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from Google has found that more than 5% of unique daily IP addresses accessing Google — tens of millions — are interrupted by ad-injection techniques, and that Superfish, responsible for a major controversy with Lenovo in February is the leading adware behind what is clearly now an industry. Amongst the report's recommendations to address the problem is the suggestion that browser makers "harden their environments against side-loading extensions or modifying the browser environment without user consent." Some of the most popular extensions for Chrome and Firefox, including ad-blockers, depend on this functionality.

An anonymous reader writes: In April 2015, we saw the naming of Microsoft Edge, the release of Chrome 42, and the first full month of Firefox 37 availability. Now we're learning that Google's browser has finally passed the 25 percent market share mark. Hit the link for some probably unnecessarily fine-grained statistics on recent browser trends. Have your browser habits shifted recently? Which browsers do you use most often?

jones_supa writes: Mozilla is officially beginning to phase out non-secure HTTP to prefer HTTPS instead. After a robust discussion on the mailing list, the company will boldly start removing capabilities of the non-secure web. There are two broad elements of this plan: setting a date after which all new features will be available only to secure websites, and gradually phasing out access to browser features for non-secure websites, especially regarding features that pose risks to users' security and privacy. This plan still allows for usage of the "http" URI scheme for legacy content. With HSTS and the upgrade-insecure-requests CSP attribute, the "http" scheme can be automatically translated to "https" by the browser, and thus run securely. The goal of this effort is also to send a message to the web developer community that they need to be secure. Mozilla expects to make some proposals to the W3C WebAppSec Working Group soon.

An anonymous reader writes Virtual Desktop is a free program that makes the Windows operating system compatible with the Oculus Rift VR headset. To the surprise of some, plugging the Oculus Rift into a computer doesn't result in a native view of the OS, meaning that users have to put on and take off the headset as they move from one VR-specific app to the next. If you want to use typical Windows programs—like Photoshop, Firefox, or Microsoft Office—no dice! That's where Virtual Desktop comes in, enabling the entire Windows desktop, and any application that can run on it, to be seen through the Oculus Rift. It also works as a bridge between VR-specific applications, allowing you to move from one to the next without ever taking off the headset. The latest version released today includes voice commands for launching VR games, global monitor mirroring, performance improvements, and is built against the latest Oculus Rift SDK.

darthcamaro writes: Barely a week ago, Mozilla released Firefox 37, which had a key new feature called opportunistic encryption. The basic idea is that it will do some baseline encryption for data that would have otherwise been sent by a user via clear text. Unfortunately, Mozilla has already issued Firefox 37.0.1, which removes opportunistic encryption. A security vulnerability was reported in the underlying Alternative Services capability that helps to enable opportunistic encryption. "If an Alt-Svc header is specified in the HTTP/2 response, SSL certificate verification can be bypassed for the specified alternate server. As a result of this, warnings of invalid SSL certificates will not be displayed and an attacker could potentially impersonate another site through a man-in-the-middle, replacing the original certificate with their own." They plan to re-enable opportunistic encryption when this issue is investigated and fixed.

jones_supa writes A critical vulnerability has been found in the MPEG-1 Layer III playback backend of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Security researcher Aki Helin reported a use-after-free scenario when playing certain audio files on the web using the Fluendo MP3 plugin for GStreamer on Linux. This is due to a flaw in handling certain MP3 files by the plugin and its interaction with Mozilla code. A maliciously crafted MP3 file can lead to a potentially exploitable crash. Linux is the only affected platform, so Windows and OS X users are safe from this particular vulnerability.

Today Mozilla began rolling out Firefox version 37.0 to release channel users. This update mostly focuses on behind-the-scenes changes. Security improvements include opportunistic encryption where servers support it and improved protection against site impersonation. They also disabled insecure TLS version fallback and added a security panel within the developer tools. One of the things end users will see is the Heartbeat feedback collection system. It will pop up a small rating widget to a random selection of users every day. After a user rates Firefox, an "engagement" page may open in the background, with links to social media pages and a donation page. Here are the release notes and full changelist.