mozilla

Firefox OS app developers hoping to snag one of the new Firefox OS phones seem to be out of luck.

The Keon and the Peak popped up for sale today courtesy of manufacturer/seller Geeksphone. But the two phones already appear on the company's Web site as "out of stock." The page for each phone simply says "this product is no longer in stock" with no further explanation.

A spokeswoman for Geeksphone told CNET at around 6:15 a.m. PT that the phones are currently out of stock due to great demand. But the … Read more

It's happened to everyone -- you visit a Web site and instead of the browser taking you directly to it, you get a notice that says you're about to visit an untrusted site. The reason this happens is because the browser hasn't certified the site.

This type of action could mean a slow death for such a Web site, since messages like these tend to scare off users.

Mozilla, Firefox's parent company, is now contemplating whether to give international telecom giant TeliaSonera this type of punishment, according to the Register. Apparently Mozilla might refuse to include … Read more

Facebook is applying its "Hacker Way" to help youngsters be more responsible in the social-networking realm.

On Thursday, the company announced Project:Connect, a partnership between the social network, the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) that's designed to shed light on what it means to participate responsibly in digital environments. Together, the partners will host an all-day hackathon in New York on May 9.

"We need to give youth the tools they need to become engaged and responsible digital citizens," Connie Yowell, director of education at the MacArthur Foundation, said … Read more

NEW YORK -- Firefox Mobile OS will launch this summer in five countries, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said at the All Things D conference here Monday.

Kocacs, who announced earlier this month that he will be stepping down from his post as CEO, said that the new operating system, which is designed for low-end devices, will launch this summer in Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain.

A spokesman for the company reiterated that the company had announced initial launch countries on February 24 when it was showing off the mobile OS at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Spain.… Read more

Up until now, only Apple's Safari browser had blocked third-party cookies by default. Last week's release of Firefox 22 to its developer's channel also came with the feature, indicating that the option will soon make it to all Firefox users.

Firefox 22 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, and for Linux) blocks third-party cookies by default, putting the ad industry on notice that browsers are about to start looking askance at them. While Safari has had the feature for a long time, no other major browser has supported it until now.

Mozilla first announced in February that … Read more

Sure, technology decisions often are the result of personal predilection, political scheming, and inter-company rivalries. But cold hard data still can win the day -- and that's the main reason why Mozilla is reconsidering its earlier decision not to support Google's WebP image format.

Specifically, new data shows that Google isn't just blowing smoke when it promised that using WebP lets Web site operators save precious bytes when it's sending Web-page data to browsers. Smaller file sizes mean that browsers can show Web pages faster, that Web site operators cut bandwidth usage, and that people with … Read more

Mozilla's Web site log-in alternative known as Persona unveiled a Beta 2 version today. Now you can sign in to any Web site supporting Persona using a Yahoo Mail account.

Persona, which is still in development, is an open authentication system that works on desktops and mobile devices. In addition to being able to log in using either your Persona ID or your Yahoo credentials, today's release introduces support for Firefox OS, which means you can expect to use Persona to log in to any Firefox OS devices that launch later this year. It also includes back-end changes … Read more

Mozilla is hoping to streamline payments for Web apps by adding a new API into its forthcoming Firefox OS that is designed to make the process easier and more secure.

The organization announced the first draft of a new payment system API last week in a blog post. The API will be integrated into Firefox OS with the aim of making payment processing simpler and provide better security and control for users. Firefox OS is Mozilla's upcoming mobile operating system.

Mozilla said that while online services such as PayPal go some way to simplifying accepting Web payments, they aren'… Read more

Mozilla is taking a new look at the WebP image format it once rejected after some large Web sites encouraged the Firefox developer to take a fresh look and after Google released a freshly upgraded version.

WebP, which derived from the VP8 video compression technology in the WebM project Google launched three years ago, is part of the search giant's effort to speed up the Web. In WebP's case, that speedup comes through use of an image compression technology Google says produces more compact files than either JPEG or PNG.

WebP can be used where both JPEG and … Read more