Mozilla Firefox 3.6
Encyclopedia
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is a version of the Firefox web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 released in January 2010. The release's main improvement over Firefox 3.5 is improved performance (due to further speed improvements in the TraceMonkey JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 engine). It uses the Gecko
Gecko (layout engine)
Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....

 1.9.2 engine (compared to 1.9.1 in FF 3.5), which improves compliance with web standards
Web standards
Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites,...

. It was codenamed Namoroka
Tsingy de Namoroka Strict Nature Reserve
Tsingy de Namoroka Strict Nature Reserve, also known as Namoroka National Park, is a strict nature reserve located in the northwestern part of Madagascar in the Mahajanga Province, specifically, the Soalala District.- Climate and geography :...

.


This release marks the beginning of a new development cycle for Firefox. As well as receiving major updates, the browser will also receive minor updates with new features. This is to allow users to receive new features more quickly. This new development approach means that Mozilla's product road map will also be updated. Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, and Mike Shaver
Mike Shaver
Mike Shaver is currently the Engineering Director at Facebook. He is known for his work on several other open source projects as well...

, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, hope to release a new roadmap that reflects the changes.

It was superseded by Firefox 4, released the next year, although FF 3.6 had a prolonged period of use and version 4 had noted user interface changes. Soon after 4, much less weight was given to major version numbers, with 6 numbers used by September of that year (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) compared to 3 in nearly a decade of Firefox development (1,2 and 3).

Firefox versions 4, 5, 6, and 7 had all reached end-of-life status while Mozilla continued supporting Firefox 3.6 with security updates. Coinciding with a proposal to cater to Enterprise users with optional Extended Support Releases beginning in 2012 based upon Firefox 10, Mozilla has tentative plans to discontinue support for Firefox 3.6 on April 24, 2012.

Development

Development for this version started on December 1, 2008. The first alpha of version 3.6 was released on August 7, 2009. The first beta version was released on October 30, followed by Beta 2 on November 10, Beta 3 on November 17, Beta 4 on November 26, and Beta 5 on December 17. Release Candidate 1 was released on January 8, 2010, followed by Release Candidate 2 on January 17. The final version was released on January 21, 2010.

Minor releases

Firefox 3.6.2 was released on March 23, 2010, followed by version 3.6.3 on April 1 which closed some bugs in the ASLR
Address space layout randomization
Address space layout randomization is a computer security method which involves randomly arranging the positions of key data areas, usually including the base of the executable and position of libraries, heap, and stack, in a process's address space.- Benefits :Address space randomization hinders...

 and DEP
Data Execution Prevention
Data Execution Prevention is a security feature included in modern operating systems.It is known to be available in Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems and is intended to prevent an application or service from executing code from a non-executable memory region. This helps...

 handling found at the Pwn2Own
Pwn2Own
Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest held at the annual CanSecWest security conference, beginning in 2007. Contestants are challenged to exploit specific software / computing platform targets with previously unknown vulnerabilities...

 contest 2010.

The Firefox developers created a new feature called Lorentz. It is named after the Lorentz National Park
Lorentz National Park
Lorentz National Park is located in the Indonesian province of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya . With an area of 25,056 km² , it is the largest national park in South-East Asia...

. A preview version of Lorentz, Firefox 3.6.3plugin1, was made available on April 8, 2010. Betas of Firefox 3.6.4 were made available starting on April 20, 2010. Firefox 3.6.4 was released on June 22, 2010. The Windows and Linux versions incorporate out-of-process plug-ins (OOPP), which isolates execution of plug-ins (Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight by default) into a separate process. This significantly reduces the number of Firefox crashes experienced by users who are watching online videos or playing games; the user can simply refresh the page to continue. Mozilla states that 30% of browser crashes are caused by third-party plugins.

Support for other plug-ins by default in OOPP and on the Mac OS X platform will become available in Firefox 4.

Firefox 3.6.6 lengthens the amount of time a plug-in is allowed to be unresponsive to the point before the plug-in quits.

Firefox 3.6.7 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.8 was a security update that was released a mere three days after 3.6.7, to fix another security fault.

Firefox 3.6.9, in addition to fixing security and stability issues, introduced support for the X-FRAME-OPTIONS HTTP response header to help prevent clickjacking
Clickjacking
Clickjacking is a malicious technique of tricking Web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer while clicking on seemingly innocuous web pages...

.

Firefox 3.6.10 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.11 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.12 was a security update that fixed a critical security issue.

Firefox 3.6.13 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.14 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.15 was a stability update that fixed a Java applets issue.

Firefox 3.6.16 was a security update that blacklisted a few invalid HTTPS certificates.

Firefox 3.6.17 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.18 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.19 was a stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.20 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.21 was a security update that blacklisted a compromised HTTPS certificate.

Firefox 3.6.22 was a security update that revoked the SSL certificates for "Staten der Nederlanden
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

" due to fraudulent SSL certificate issuance, as well as fixing an error with .gov.uk domain names.

Firefox 3.6.23 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Firefox 3.6.24 is a security and stability update that fixed several issues.

Features

New features for Firefox 3.6 include
  • Built-in support for Personas
    Personas for Firefox
    Personas for Firefox is a feature in the browser Mozilla Firefox that allows a user to select simple-to-use themes, known as "Personas", more easily than normal themes. Although at first only available as an extension, the feature was built-in to Mozilla Firefox 3.6...

     (browser Graphical user interface
    Graphical user interface
    In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

     themes)
  • Check and notification of out-of-date plugins
  • Full screen playback of Theora
    Theora
    Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....

     video
  • Support for the WOFF
    Web Open Font Format
    The Web Open Font Format is a font format for use in web pages. It was developed during 2009 and is in the process of being standardized as a recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium Web Fonts Working Group....

     open webfont format
  • Plug-in directory lock down: Plugins may only to be installed using a .xpi file, not through mere copying to the Firefox plugin directory. This breaks older plugins such as the Java Runtime Environment before 6 Update 15, .net framework before 1.2.
  • Many performance improvements

See also

  • History of Firefox


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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