Bucking the trend of increasingly experimental desktop interfaces, the developers behind the Linux Mint are adopting a simpler desktop for the next version of the open-source Linux distribution.Source: Computerworld
Linux Mint 13 will feature an entirely new user interface, called Cinnamon. Earlier this week, the Linux Mint developers released a version of the shell. Previous editions of Linux Mint used a standard version of the Gnome environment...."
Linux Mint 13 gets back to desktop basics
If you are working with multiple profiles in Firefox you have probably your own ingenious way of launching them. Some Firefox users may use shortcuts to launch their profiles, others the built-in profile manager, the command line or an add-on like SwitchySource: Ghacks Technology News
If you are new to the concept, I suggest you take a look at the following guides that will get you started..."
Firefox Profile Switcher Add-on
Johnathan Nightingale, Sr. Director of Firefox Engineering has posted on the Future of Firefox blog describing what is involved in switching Firefox for Android UI from XML to the new Native UI. While the rapid release process from a features stand point makes sense and works, this is not the case for this change over.
However, when we decided to rebuild Firefox for Android using a native UI, we recognized that the first release couldn’t ride the trains. The iterative release model that serves us so well with Firefox works best when most changes are incremental and independent. Building a new high-performance front end for Firefox on Android, by contrast, involves many interconnected pieces being rebuilt in tandem.
As a result the move over to the Beta channel may not align with that of the Firefox for desktop (January 31st, 2012) as the developers want to ensure that everything is working and are happy with the quality of performance. In the future, once this process has been successfully completed and working as promised, Firefox for Android release will follow the same release schedule as the desktop builds. If you are wanting to try out the new Native UI, it is on the Firefox 11 Aurora for Android build.
Recently there was post in Go Firefox! in which the user had installed the British English Dictionary add-on but the spellchecker was still using the US English dictionary. There is an additional step once you have installed the new dictionary add-on and restarted Firefox. You need to tell Firefox which dictionary it should be using. While, you can install as many different dictionaries as you like (as seen in the example below), you can only use one at a given time.
A while back I mentioned my unhappiness with a change Mozilla made in Firefox 9 with the new ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ feature introduced in Firefox 8. For those who don’t recall the change, in Firefox 8 when this option was selected, any tab (normal or pinned) would not load until selected. Then in Firefox 9, this option only applied to normal tabs and pinned tabs would always load upon startup. Mozilla’s justification for the change was that the purpose of the pinned or app tabs was for web applications (chat, email, etc.) and therefore it would be desired that these always load upon startup. Well, I (and many others) don’t use pinned/app tabs for their intended purpose. I used them for sites (which does include a webmail site) I always have use and therefore having only the favicon showing freed up space on the tab bar.
After much user outcry (Bug 708585) Mozilla has introduced a (hidden) preference starting with the 01-21-2012 Firefox 12 Nightly Build that will allow users NOT to load pinned tabs on demand. By default, this option is disabled so you will need to enable it:
A couple important notes:
The ‘List all Tabs’ button is not one I use that often and may be that is why I had not noticed it was MIA in the Firefox 12 nighties. That was until this was brought up in the Firefox Builds forum last week. Turns out this is not a glitch, but a change as per Bug 714281 (Show the all tabs button only when the tab strip overflows). If you can not live without the ‘List all Tabs’ button, you can add these lines to your userChrome.css file [instructions]:
/* Show "List all Tabs" Button */
#alltabs-button {visibility: visible !important;}
From the January 9th, 2012 Mozilla Weekly Status meeting was mention that “The biggest piece of Silent Update landed: a Windows service so updates don’t require UAC prompts.” The link takes you to the feature page, but really doesn’t provide much more info. I am not even certain if the entire feature is done yet. If it is then we would likely see this in the Firefox 12 release on July 17th, 2012.
The announcement of the first Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) coming with Firefox 10 on January 31st also means Firefox 3.6 support will finally be ending. Mozilla will end support for Firefox 3.6 on April 24th, 2012 which is 12-weeks after the first Firefox ESR launch on January 31st, 2012. Firefox 3.6 was released in January 2010 and will be the longest running Firefox release at 27 months (followed by Firefox 2.0.0 which was retired after 22 months).
Have you received an invitation to turn your Facebook profile red or black? Maybe pink?
"Ignore it, security experts warn. It is another scam spreading on the social media site..."
Friday, 13 Jan 2012,
Source: MyFoxNY.com Scam Offers Pink Facebook Profile Switch
Mozilla recently announced the planned implementation of an Extended Support Release (ESR) for enterprise users and other users who do not want to take part of the rapid release cycle. We touched on ESR briefly back in October 2011. Under the ESR plan, there will be one ES Firefox release per year (the first based of the upcoming Firefox 10 due out at the end of this month). Under the rapid release process, there is a new Firefox release every six weeks which is about 8 releases per year (which is fairly close to the amount under the old release process).
I do think this is a great idea, however I have issues with the ESR process. It does address the concerns raised by Enterprise users. However, once a year I just don’t think is frequent enough. Keep in mind, there will still be regular stability and security updates throughout the year, but only one major update per year. A couple issues I could see with doing ESR once a year:
Again, the first planned ESR is going to be based of the upcoming Firefox 10 release at end of the month. This would be about 10-months after the Firefox 4 release. This is a span of only 6 rapid release releases (a typical year will be around 8 or 9 releases). Now, consider all the changes/features that have happened in the span of these 6 releases (new web developer tools, tab loading, 3rd party add-ons handling, and various adaptations and handling of new web technologies (more so on the backend). Imagine if you had not updated since Firefox 4 and then made the move of Firefox 10…it would be quite a shock, much like moving from Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4.0 was. This is the way it would be with an annual ESR. This is why I would think semi-annual would work better. There would be two major roll-outs a year instead of one (still would be easier on IT departments than 8 to 9 per year). Plus users would get more of the new changes/features sooner and without being overwhelmed.
I suppose much like Rapid Release there were kinks that needed to be worked out with the ESR process as well. It just seems like it is going to be more difficult with only doing these once a year. This should prove to be quite interesting.
