|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

Development

Mozilla releases Firefox 3.1 Beta 1

By Forrest Cook
October 22, 2008

Version 3.1 Beta 1 of the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser was announced on October 14, 2008. This is a testing release:

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

The release announcement and the Web Developer Feature Overview page discuss the new capabilities in more detail. The major new additions include:

  • Support has been added for the html <video> and <audio> elements using the OGG Theora and OGG Vorbis formats.
  • Geolocation features have been added, but not in the Linux version (discussed here).
  • The Gecko layout engine has some improved web standards implementations.
  • More CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties have been implemented.
  • Support for the CSS @font-face property has been added (Mac OS-X and Windows only), allowing support for downloadable user-specified true type fonts.
  • Support for Access Control for Cross-Site Requests has been added.
  • Beta support for Mozilla's TraceMonkey JavaScript engine has been added.
  • Some new customizations are available for controlling the Smart Location Bar.
  • JavaScript web worker threads are being worked on.
  • New graphics, SVG and CSS capabilities are being added.
  • Improvements have been made to the browser tabs including:
    • A new "Open a new tab" button has been added to the tab bar.
    • Support for switching between tabs with Ctrl-Tab has been added.
    • Tabs can now be dragged and dropped between Firefox windows.
  • More features are planned for the official Mozilla 3.1 release.

[Firefox 3]

Your author spent an entire day doing his normal LWN work using Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 on an Ubuntu 8.04 system. The only problem that showed up was choppy and aliased audio playback when viewing some of the recommended test videos. Otherwise, the browser worked well.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is available for download here, it is a good idea to read the release notes first.

Comments (8 posted)

System Applications

Database Software

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The October 19, 2008 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

SQLite release 3.6.4 announced

Version 3.6.4 of SQLite, a light weight DBMS, has been announced. A number of new capabilities and some bug fixes have been added.

Comments (none posted)

Package Management

RPM 5.1.6 released

Version 5.1.6 of the RPM package manager has been announced. "We've today released RPM 5.1.6, another maintenance release from the stable RPM 5.1 branch."

Full Story (comments: none)

Printing

Gutenprint: 5.2.1 Release (SourceForge)

Version 5.2.1of Gutenprint has been announced, it includes support for many new printers and other improvements. Gutenprint is: "A very high quality package of printer drivers for Ghostscript and CUPS on Linux, Macintosh OS X, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems. This project also maintains an enhanced Print plug-in for GIMP 2.x from the same code base."

Comments (none posted)

Security

conntrack-tools 0.9.8 released

Version 0.9.8 of conntrack-tools has been announced. "The netfilter project proudly presents another development release of the conntrack-tools. This release includes important updates, fixes and improvements. Moreover, a new user manual has been released, contributions to improve are welcome! Detailed changelog is attached. What are the conntrack-tools? - The userspace daemon so-called conntrackd that covers the specific aspects of stateful Linux firewalls to enable high availability solutions."

Full Story (comments: none)

sqlmap 0.6.1 released

Version 0.6.1 of sqlmap has been announced, it includes some new features. "sqlmap is an automatic SQL injection tool developed in Python. Its goal is to detect and take advantage of SQL injection vulnerabilities on web applications. Once it detects one or more SQL injections on the target host, the user can choose among a variety of options to perform an extensive back-end database management system fingerprint, retrieve DBMS session user and database, enumerate users, password hashes, privileges, databases, dump entire or user's specific DBMS tables/columns, run his own SQL SELECT statement, read specific files on the file system and much more."

Full Story (comments: none)

Telecom

Android source available

Google has finally released the source to its "Android" mobile phone platform; it can be obtained from source.android.com. It's not for the faint of heart: "The source is approximentely [sic] 2.1GB in size. You will need 6GB free to complete the build."

Comments (49 posted)

queXS: 0.9.0 (Beta) First public release (SourceForge)

Beta Version 0.9.0 of queXS, a Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing package, has been announced. "queXS handles questionnaire design (via LimeSurvey and queXML), integration with VoIP (Asterisk), operator management and performance, data output in standard formats (DDI), client progress reporting, easy sample file import, simple appointment system, fast and effective case queuing, and more."

Comments (none posted)

Web Site Development

amplee 0.6.1 - AtomPub Python implementation

Version 0.6.1 of amplee, a Python implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol, is out. "This release is a minor release that fixes a few annoying defects and improves overall performances of the internal of amplee".

Full Story (comments: none)

Gallery: 2.3 (Skidoo) Released (SourceForge)

Version 2.3 of Gallery has been announced. "Gallery is an online photo album organizer. Whether for small personal sites or large community sites, Gallery provides an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into any website. Serving millions worldwide, Gallery is the most widely used system of its kind. Gallery is free to download and use. Gallery 2.3 (Skidoo) is now available for download! It's been almost 20 months since the last major release and Gallery 2.3 is packed with new features and enhancements. Major new features include: A much improved slideshow using PicLens to provide a rich, full screen experience; Comment spam filtering with Akismet; and configurable e-mail notifications."

Comments (none posted)

Miscellaneous

Solitox Community Framework: libmsocket-0.4 release (SourceForge)

Version 0.4 of Solitox has been announced. "The Solitox Community system provides an integrated real-time chat service, web interface, and a scalable infrastructure for adding more services with common credentials. These interfaces allow a greater level of communication for your users. The 0.4 release of libmsocket is somewhat preliminary - the basic functionality for TCP sockets is there, and it works, which should allow folks to start developing with it. In addition to this first stable release, a FreeBSD port has been submitted and committed to the FreeBSD ports tree. I am also currently seeking folks to release packages for other operating systems and distributions, especially pkgsrc and several Linux distributions."

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

Xtreme Media Player 0.6.0 released

Version 0.6.0 of Xtreme Media Player has been announced. "Finally the version 0.6.0 is out. In this release mostly of the source files were rewritten in order to fix bugs and support the new upcoming features."

Comments (none posted)

Plugins For Ardour

The Ardour multi-track audio editor project has announced a new plugins page. "Ardour does not come with any built-in signal processors of its own (other than volume faders) and it also generally doesn't ship with any plugins. This page provides informations on plugins that you can use with Ardour, many of which are available at no charge."

Comments (none posted)

Business Applications

OrangeHRM Releases Version 2.4 (SourceForge)

Version 2.4 of OrangeHRM has been announced. "OrangeHRM developed by OrangeHRM Inc is an Open Source HR Information Systems (HRIS) that covers Personnel Information Management, Employee Self Service, Leave, Time & Attendance, Benefits and Recruitment. New Recruitment Module - a result of OrangeHRM and its user community collaboration has brought out a powerful, comprehensive and user friendly recruitment engine that can be easily plugged into your company’s website."

Comments (none posted)

CAD

Asymptote: 1.46 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.46 of Asymptote, a vector graphics language for technical drawing, has been announced. "Release Notes for Version 1.46 Support was added for embedding 3D PRC files within LaTeX even when settings.render=0. An error is now signalled if the user tries to render an image without freeglut library support. The Klein bottle example was updated to use lightgray instead of the new default surface color (black). The sphere animation example was updated to work with the new skeleton structure in the solids module."

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.24.1 released

Version 2.24.1 of the GNOME desktop environment has been announced. "This is the first update to GNOME 2.24. Come and see all the bug fixing, all the new translations and all the updated documentation brought to you by the wonderful team of GNOME contributors! A lot of work has been done in the stable branch to make it even more solid than it was."

Full Story (comments: none)

GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The September 28, 2008 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "Continued work on PowerDevil, and the "NetworkManager" and "Weather" Plasmoids. Monochrome action icons in Plasma expand to cover KRunner. A first working version of QEdje script engine, and the import of a "Window Manager" runner. Work on new containments and a mobile internet devices (MID) panel in Plasma. Various improvements in Konsole and the Kvkbd keyboard utility. Support for adding actions implemented by Kross scripts in Lokalize..."

Comments (none posted)

Xfce 4.6 BETA-1 released

Version 4.6 BETA-1 of Xfce, a light weight desktop environment, has been announced. "A lot of bugs have been fixed in this release; a few highlights: - Xfwm4 can now detect if a program is unresponsive. It will show a dialog to let the user kill it. - Xfce4-session will start up significantly faster by starting apps in parallel where possible. - It is possible to configure the keyboard layout. - Toggling event-sounds with libcanberra + gtk 2.14 is now possible (meaning: you can turn them off). And lets not forget the translations, thanks to them Xfce 4.6.0 will be available to a lot of people in their native language."

Comments (none posted)

Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week: More information can be found on the X.Org Foundation wiki.

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Publishing

DiffPDF 0.3.4 released

Version 0.3.4 of DiffPDF has been announced. "DiffPDF is a program for comparing two PDF files. By default the comparison is of the text on each pair of pages, but comparing the appearance of pages is also supported (for example, if a diagram is changed or a paragraph reformatted). It is also possible to compare particular pages or page ranges (for example, to account for pages added to one PDF but not the other)."

Full Story (comments: none)

Encryption Software

GPGME 1.1.7 released

Version 1.1.7 of GPGME has been announced. "We are pleased to announce version 1.1.7 of GnuPG Made Easy, a library designed to make access to GnuPG easier for applications."

Full Story (comments: none)

Interoperability

Wine 1.0.1 announced

Version 1.0.1 of Wine has been announced. "This is a maintenance release from the 1.0 stable branch. It contains only translation updates and small bug fixes."

Comments (none posted)

Multimedia

Elisa Media Center 0.5.15 released

Version 0.5.15 of Elisa Media Center has been announced. "The focus during this release cycle has been put on fixing bugs (16 closed, with an emphasis on reducing memory leaks and usability improvements), while a good part of the team was working on implementing new features with a mid-term target. These features will show up within the next releases of Elisa, stay tuned!"

Full Story (comments: none)

Music Applications

Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard 0.2.2

Version 0.2.2 of Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard has been announced. "This is a maintenance release, fixing a crash at startup when no MIDI input devices were found. The load/save options now display a warning message if the file operation fails. Spanish translation has been updated."

Full Story (comments: none)

Digital Photography

UFRaw 0.14 released

Version 0.14 of UFRaw, a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras, has been announced. "UFRaw-0.14 was just released. 33 new cameras got supported thanks to dcraw and we have 7 new translations. Some of the controls in the user interface were shuffled, getting rid of the "Save As" pop-up dialog. Hopefully the new interface will streamline your workflow."

Full Story (comments: none)

UFRaw 0.14.1 released

Version 0.14.1 of UFRaw, a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras, has been announced. "I just made a new release to fix 2 small, but annoying, bugs".

Full Story (comments: none)

Science

Modular toolkit for Data Processing 2.4 released

Version 2.4 of Modular toolkit for Data Processing has been announced, it includes some new features, bug fixes and Python 3.0 migration work. "MDP is a Python library of widely used data processing algorithms that can be combined according to a pipeline analogy to build more complex data processing software. The base of available algorithms includes, to name but the most common, Principal Component Analysis (PCA and NIPALS), several Independent Component Analysis algorithms (CuBICA, FastICA, TDSEP, and JADE), Slow Feature Analysis, Restricted Boltzmann Machine, and Locally Linear Embedding."

Full Story (comments: none)

Video Applications

PiTiVi 0.11.2 released

Version 0.11.2 of PiTiVi, an open source video editor, has been announced. "The PiTiVi team is proud to announce the third release in the unstable 0.11 PiTiVi series. This release series is not intended to be production-ready, but instead to allow users to try more often new features that will be available in the next stable series."

Full Story (comments: none)

Miscellaneous

Kamaelia 0.6.0 and Axon 1.6.0 released

Version 0.6.0 of Kamaelia and version 1.6.0 of Axon have been announced. "In Kamaelia you build systems from simple components that talk to each other. This speeds development, massively aids maintenance and also means you build naturally concurrent software. It's intended to be accessible by any developer, including novices. It also makes it fun :) What sort of systems? Network servers, clients, desktop applications, pygame based games, transcode systems and pipelines, digital TV systems, spam eradicators, teaching tools, and a fair amount more :)"

Full Story (comments: none)

Languages and Tools

C

GCC 4.4.0 Status Report

The October 21, 2008 edition of the GCC 4.4.0 Status Report has been published. "The trunk remains Stage 3, so only bug fixes and documentation changes are allowed. While the various maintainers have discretion in allowing additional changes, they should, at this point, being using that discretion sparingly. We should now be focusing clearly on getting 4.4 out the door, not on adding more things to it. As expected, there are a number of performance and a few correctness issues stemming from IRA. These include bootstrap problems on popular platforms. There are also several issues that seem to be related to the use of assembler CFI directives."

Full Story (comments: none)

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The October 21, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

Full Story (comments: none)

Java

Jikes RVM 3.0.1 released

Version 3.0.1 of Jikes RVM has been announced, it includes new capabilities and bug fixes. "The Jikes Research Virtual Machine (RVM) is designed to execute Java(TM) programs that are typically used in research on fundamental virtual machine design issues."

Full Story (comments: none)

Lilith: 0.9.32 has been released (SourceForge)

Version 0.9.32 of Lilith has been announced, it includes a number of new features and some bug fixes. "Lilith is a Logging- and AccessEvent viewer for SLF4j/LOGBack."

Comments (none posted)

Python

Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The October 21, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

Full Story (comments: none)

Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The October 22, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: 1)

Version Control

bzr 1.8 released

Version 1.8 of bzr, a distributed version control system, has been announced. "Bazaar 1.8 includes several fixes that improve working tree performance, display of revision logs, and merges. The bzr testsuite now passes on OS X and Python 2.6, and almost completely passes on Windows. The smartserver code has gained several bug fixes and performance improvements, and can now run server-side hooks within an http server."

Full Story (comments: none)

GIT 1.6.0.3 released

Version 1.6.0.3 of GIT, a distributed version control system, has been announced, it includes numerous bug fixes and documentation improvements. "This one is larger than usual, as I took two weeks off since 1.6.0.2."

Full Story (comments: none)

Miscellaneous

OpenGrok 0.7 has been released

Version 0.7 of OpenGrok has been announced. "OpenGrok is a fast and usable source code search and cross reference engine. It helps you search, cross-reference and navigate your source tree. It can understand various program file formats and version control histories like Mercurial, Git, SCCS, RCS, CVS, Subversion, Teamware, ClearCase, Perforce and Bazaar. In other words it lets you grok (profoundly understand) the open source, hence the name OpenGrok. It is written in Java, and is OSS under the CDDL license."

Full Story (comments: none)

Page editor: Forrest Cook
Next page: Linux in the news>>


Copyright © 2008, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds