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DevelopmentA test run of Firefox 3 The Mozilla Firefox web browser project has just announced the first beta release of Firefox 3. The release notes explain some of the major changes in this release: ![[Firefox 3]](/images/ns/firefox3.png)
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
The list of new features in Firefox 3 includes:
Installation of Firefox 3 was simple, the tar.bz2 file was downloaded, uncompressed and untared. Running the software involved moving to the newly created firefox directory and typing ./firefox on the command line. Your author used Firefox 3 to perform a day of browser-intensive lwn.net work. The browser did not crash, and no unusual actions were encountered. Performance was initially not hugely different from Firefox 2, one noticeable slowdown was observed when switching between tabs. After several hours of use, Firefox 3 started to bog down considerably. The memory footprint of 300MB Virtual and 100MB resident was slightly higher than for Firefox 2 with a similar number of open tabs. From a user interface perspective, the browser is very similar in appearance to Firefox 2. The location bar has a few more buttons on the sides, moving the mouse over the buttons reveals the underlying new functions. A number of changes are visible in the pulldown Tools menu, but nothing is too difficult to understand. A number of previously installed Firefox 2 plugins, discussed here, worked without any troubles. The new Edit/Preferences/Applications window gives some new control on the handling of various file types. The Tools/Add-ons/Plugins window has a Get Plugins option that should streamline the process of installing add-on handlers. Despite the 2 million changed source code lines, Firefox 3 Beta 1 is in decent shape and appears to be close to ready for daily use. Since the software is still in the beta stage, it may be best to hold off on using it for mission critical applications.
System Applications Database Software Postgres Weekly News The November 18, 2007 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.27 released Version 3.0.27 of Samba has been announced. "Samba 3.0.27 is a security release to address CVE-2007-4572 and CVE-2007-5398."
LDAP Software OpenLDAP Weekly News The November 13, 2007 edition of the OpenLDAP Weekly News is out with the latest OpenLDAP project developments.
Security Open Computer Forensics Architecture 2.0.6 patchset 2 (SourceForge) Version 2.0.6 patchset 2 of Open Computer Forensics Architecture has been announced. The software description states: "A modular computer forensics framework. The project aims to be highly modular, robust,fault tolerant, recursive and scalable in order to be usable in large investigations that spawn numerous terabytes of evidence data and covers hundreds of evidence items. The patch level 2 of ocfa fixes a number of issues, the most important one is a workaround for the fact that the lucene indexer is unable to process large files without allocating very large amounts of memory. Next to this the configure process has been made more robust."
Web Site Development PHP For Applications 2.2 released (SourceForge) Version 2.2 of PHP For Applications has been announced. "P4A (PHP For Applications) is a PHP RAD and object oriented PHP framework for building event-driven stateful web applications. Features tableless HTML, accesskey, auto data type recognition, transparent AJAX, UTF-8, i18n/l10n, PEAR integration."
Segue CMS 1.8.13 released (SourceForge) Version 1.8.13 of Segue CMS has been announced. "Segue is an open source collaborative content management system designed for e-learning that combines the ease of use of course management systems with the flexibility of weblogs for creating various types of sites including course, news, and journal. This release fixes bugs in Segue's email functionality."
Miscellaneous Domain Name Registry System 1.41 released (SourceForge) Version 1.41 of the Shared Registry System has been announced. "The Shared Registry System is software (client and servers) for managing a domain name registry, and is most likely to be of use for managing a country TLD. The software was originally developed in 2002 to manage the New Zealand (.nz) domain name space."
Jitterbit 1.3 released (SourceForge) Version 1.3 of Jitterbit has been announced. "Jitterbit is an open source integration tool that delivers a quick and simple way to design, configure, test, and deploy integration solutions. It supports many document types and protocols: XML, web services, database, LDAP, text, FTP, HTTP(S), file. We are excited to announce the newest version of our Open Source integration platform is now available in general release. Jitterbit 1.3 is a major release that significantly improves the overall architecture for enterprise companies and the overall user experience."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Audacious, Audacious-Plugins 1.4.1 released Version 1.4.1 of the Audacious music player and Audacious-Plugins have been announced. "Audacious 1.4.1 and Plugins 1.4.1 have been released. You need to compile both, as a minor API change happened to fix a regression bug between 1.4.0 and 1.4.1. Update: version 1.4.2 of the Audacious core was released to add functions needed for xmms-crossfade."
Audacity 1.3.4 released Version 1.3.4 of the Audacity audio editor has been announced. "The Audacity Team is pleased to announce the release of Audacity 1.3.4 (beta), which includes several new features and user interface improvements, such as: New Welcome Screen with introduction to Audacity. New 'Mix and Render to New Track' command. Support for VAMP audio analysis plug-ins. More keyboard shortcuts and navigation. Reworked solo/mute handling. New preference: Select all audio in project, if none selected (on by default). New preference: Beep on completion of longer activities. Envelopes: Many fixes when copying, pasting, or repeating. Many translation updates. Metadata editor added for OGG, FLAC and WAV/AIFF exports. Metadata import improved. Muted tracks are no longer audible in the exported mix. Improvements to latency correction."
XMMS2 0.4 released Version 0.4 of the XMMS2 music player has been announced. "XMMS2 0.4 DrKosmos contains the new official XMMS2 logo, a few new plugins such as a PulseAudio output plugin and lots of bugfixes. Hope you will have as much fun downloading, compiling and using it as we had making it."
Desktop Environments Equinox desktop environment 1.2 released Version 1.2 of the Equinox desktop environment has been announced. "This is a bugfix release of EDE and eFLTK packages (and hopefully the last one of 1.x code and the last eFLTK release). It comes with improved support for 64-bit platforms, redesigned epanelconf and full German and French translations."
GNOME 2.21.2 released Version 2.21.2 of the GNOME desktop environment has been released. "This is the second release of the GNOME 2.21.x series, heading towards the stable GNOME 2.22.x release."
GARNOME 2.21.2 released Version 2.21.2 GARNOME, the bleeding-edge GNOME distribution, is out. "This release includes all of GNOME 2.21.2 plus a whole bunch of updates and fixes that were released after the GNOME freeze date."
GNOME Software Announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE 4.0 RC1 'Calamity' released The KDE Project has announced the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. "While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase." The announcement also mentions the final release of the KDE Development Platform.
KDE Software Announcements The following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Xorg Software Announcements The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Games History and Future of OLPC SimCity / Micropolis Don Hopkins provides a history of SimCity on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) platform. "The GPL source code version of SimCity will not be called "SimCity", but we will use the SimCity source code to make a city building game called "Micropolis", which was the original working title of SimCity. That's because EA reserves the right to review and QA the official version of the game that's published under the name "SimCity" on the OLPC. So we can make improvements to the TCL/Tk version of Micropolis (based on the GPL source code), and submit them to EA for review and QA, which if they approve, will be used as the officially branded version of SimCity for the OLPC."
BZFlag 2.0.10 released (SourceForge) Version 2.0.10 of BZFlag has been announced. "The BZFlag developers are not so proud to announce the release of BZFlag 2.0.10 “Never Say Never”. This version contains some bug fixes for newer hardware (dual core, and 64 bit machines). We recommend that all users and server owners upgrade to it as soon as possible. The release has only a small number of new features, Please see the change log for details."
Imaging Applications Art Tablets for Krita (KDE.News) KDE.News reports on the donation of graphics tablets to the developers of the Krita image editor project. "The Krita donation drive has succeeded beyond the expectations of the Krita developers. Donations from all over the world made it possible to buy two Intuos graphics tablets and two art pens for the Krita developers to test their software with. The Krita developers are very grateful to the community for making this possible. The Intuos tablets and art pens make it possible to develop brushes and tools that make use of advanced features such as tilt and rotation for Krita 2.0."
UniConvertor 1.0.0 released Version 1.0.0 of UniConvertor has been announced. "UniConvertor is a universal vector graphics translator. It uses sK1 engine to convert one format to another. Development of the import/export modules for this program goes through different stages, quality and feature coverage are different among formats." (Thanks to Valek).
Mail Clients Claws Mail 3.1.0 announced Version 3.1.0 of the Claws Mail email client has been announced, many new features have been added. Here are some of the changes: "Non-blocking NNTP has been implemented. NNTP support is now provided by and depends upon libetpan GnuTLS support has been implemented as an alternative to OpenSSL. A run-time alternative configuration directory switch has been added, Tags: Added tag alphabetical sorting and unified the dialogues. Edit accounts dialogue: The 'default account' (D) column has been removed, instead the default account is indicated by use of bold text..."
Music Applications nova 0.1.1 released Version 0.1.1 of nova, a Dataflow language for music composition, is out. "i just did a new release of nova. i didn't add too many new features since the last 0.1 release, but was mainly working on bug fixes ..."
Web Browsers Mozilla Links Newsletter The November 8, 2007 edition of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is online, take a look for the latest news about the Mozilla browser and related projects.
Miscellaneous LimeSurvey: 1.53plus stable released (SourceForge) Version 1.53plus of LimeSurvey has been announced. "LimeSurvey (formerly PHPSurveyor) is a fully functional survey development & dataentry system - including dataentry screen, public dataentry script, method for issuing tokens, emailing invitations & recording responses, basic statistical analysis and more. In our ongoing quest for absolute stability and the firm will to provide you always with the finest and most stable code and new languages we released today the first 1.53plus stable version (this version will be updated every week). This new version contains beside a few minor bugfixes three new languages: Macedonian, Estonian and Bosnian!"
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The November 20, 2007 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.
Lisp GNU CLISP 2.43 released Version 2.43 of GNU CLISP has been announced. "Among other things, this version was updated to use the standard GNU build process, support for Berkeley DB 4.5 and 4.6 was added, and a few bugs were fixed."
Python Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links The November 19, 2007 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Editors Leo 4.4.5 beta 1 released (SourceForge) Version 4.4.5 beta 1 of Leo has been announced, it has several new capabilities and bug fixes. "Leo is: 1) a programmers, outlining editor and a flexible browser, 2) a literate programming tool, 3) a data organizer and project manager. 4) fully scriptable using Python, 5) Portable. Leo.py will run on any platform with Python and Tk/tcl."
Libraries FreeImage 3.10.0 released (SourceForge) Version 3.10.0 of FreeImage, a library with support for numerous graphic formats, has been announced. "Release 3.10.0 comes with two new HDR formats, JPEG2000 and OpenEXR, as well as the now famous 'Fattal tone mapping algorithm'. To Linux users: the library now make use of the gcc 'visibility' option, so that previous incompatibilities reported with some libraries such as GTK should now belong to the past."
libnetfilter_conntrack 0.0.82 released Version 0.0.82 of libnetfilter_conntrack has been announced. "libnetfilter_conntrack is a userspace library providing a programming interface (API) to the in-kernel connection tracking state table. This release includes TCP flags support and one bugfix for big-endian platforms."
Pantheios 1.0.1 beta 52 released (SourceForge) Version 1.0.1 beta 52 of Pantheios has been announced. "Pantheios is an Open Source C/C++ Logging API library, offering an optimal combination of 100% type-safety, efficiency, genericity and extensibility. It is simple to use and extend, highly-portable (platform and compiler-independent) and, best of all, it upholds the C tradition of you only pay for what you use."
Version Control GIT 1.5.3.6 announced Version 1.5.3.6 of GIT is out with numerous bug fixes and documentation work.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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