July 3 - 9:55am EDT   Having just released Firefox 3.5 on Tuesday, Mozilla is already developing a minor troubleshooting update. The company says it expects Firefox 3.5.1 to be released in mid-to-late July, fixing three bugs and "topcrashes," referring to the most common crashes experienced by users. "[The] goal of this release should be a quick turnaround that fixes topcrashes and bugs we almost held ship for," a note states. [full story]

June 30 - 11:30am EDT   Mozilla today published the final version of Firefox 3.5. The new version of the Gecko-based browser emphasizes speed with overall improvements as well as a new JavaScript engine, nicknamed TraceMonkey, that dramatically improves the speed of sites using such code; Mozilla estimates 3.5 is about as twice as fast as 3.0. Privacy and security are also bolstered with a new private browsing mode as well as better anti-phishing and malware detection. [full story]

June 16 - 3:35pm EDT   The recent Firefox 3.0.11 update is causing problems for many Mac users working with network-based home folders. Several bug reports indicate the browser is unable to locate the history or bookmarks, while the search field is inoperable and users cannot enter a URL into the access field. The problem reportedly affects both PPC- and Intel-based Macs. [full story]

June 12 - 8:45am EDT   Microsoft's decision to pull Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe isn't enough to address EU antitrust complaints about the company's abuse of the market, the European Commission said Friday. The continent's officials now say that Microsoft's proposed solution would actually hurt competition as it would leave the five percent of those buying retail copies of Windows each year with few options. Instead of having an immediate choice, buyers would have to resort to obtaining a physical copy of a web browser or else some alternative. [full story]

May 7 - 8:05am EDT   Mozilla and Opera on Thursday criticized Microsoft over settings in the Windows 7 release candidate that they claim are designed to be anti-competitive. The two web browser developers point out to FT that users who opt to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista rather than install fresh are given an "express" option that automatically reverts the default browser to Internet Explorer even if Firefox, Opera or another browser was set as the default before. Although the "custom" choice lets users maintain this setting, Mozilla and Opera argue that Microsoft is hoping most users won't be aware of this or that it will be considered too much extra work. [full story]

April 15 - 3:40pm EDT   Microsoft today said it had been given a second extension by the European Commission to prepare a response against antitrust charges that it has unfairly controlled web browsers. Having already been given a first extension that gave it until April 21st, the American firm has until April 28th to provide its own stance and early defense against the claims. Why the added time is required hasn't been formally explained. [full story]

March 28 - 7:25pm EDT   Mozilla has released an update to its popular web browser, Firefox 3.0.8. The company has dealt with two security issues marked as critical under its rating of importance. The first fix involves the XUL method in some cases triggering garbage collection routines on objects which were still in use. This resulted in possible browser crashes when attempting to access a previously destroyed object, and could be used to run harmful code on a person’s computer. [full story]

March 24 - 7:40pm EDT   The Khronos Group has released an update to its graphics acceleration specification, OpenGL 3.1, while announcing a new project aimed at bringing 3D graphics to the Internet. The latest version of OpenGL offers an improved shading language, GLSL 1.40, with enhanced programmability, more efficient vertex processing, additional texturing functionality and improved buffer management. [full story]

March 20 - 3:25pm EDT   The release of Internet Explorer 8 hasn't had any significant impact on Firefox or any other competing browser, data collected by StatsCounter shows. While the final release of IE8 increased its market share slightly on launch day to 1.39 percent, Firefox 3.0 grew more quickly and reached 25.38 percent. The most significant losses were for Internet Explorer 7: the outgoing browser lost 0.4 percent of the total share. [full story]

March 19 - 7:50am EDT   Microsoft on Thursday said it would launch Internet Explorer 8 at 12PM Eastern. The app is the company's first significant web browser release since 2006 and is partly meant to address gaps in its feature set compared to other, newer browsers: a new rendering engine makes it more compatible with true W3C web standards while still having support for IE-specific pages. It also has shortcuts to perform context-sensitive tasks through specific websites (such as a Facebook search), visual search suggestions, and a WebClip-like feature known as Web Slices that lets users bookmark specific sections of websites and see them at a glance. [full story]

March 11 - 11:50am EDT   The European Commission today said it would give Microsoft extra time to respond to its statement of objection that accuses Microsoft of breaking antitrust laws by requiring that Internet Explorer ship with Windows. The American company now has until April 21st to provide an initial response after it complained that the original eight-week deadline, or March 12th, didn't give it enough time to offer a proper answer to the charges. It's not known if the delay will affect other aspects of the case. [full story]

March 10 - 10:25am EDT   The next major update for Firefox, v3.1, will instead become v3.5, says Mozilla's director for the browser, Mike Beltzner. Developers have allegedly complained that the v3.1 designation does not reflect the number of changes in the browser, which is already at v3.0.7 and yet missing components key to the former v3.1. Central is the addition of TraceMonkey, an engine which allows native code compilation within Mozilla's JavaScript technology. [full story]

March 4 - 3:40pm EST   Firefox 3 has become the first non-Microsoft web browser to overtake Internet Explorer 6 in market share, according to new data from StatCounter. The open source browser climbed to 24 percent of users in February while IE6 dipped to just over 22.6 percent, making Firefox the second most popular browser by individual version. Although Internet Explorer 7 still leads with 40.8 percent, the Firefox increase narrows the gap as Microsoft's browser has remained largely flat since at least July. [full story]

February 24 - 10:35am EST   The European Commission late Monday said it plans to require that Microsoft offer web browsers other than Internet Explorer in Windows. The EU body's spokesman Jonathan Todd says a final decision in the matter would mandate a choice of which browsers to download and install in addition to the existing ability to specify a default app. The feature would potentially involve a portal that lets users choose the browser early on. [full story]

February 19 - 5:00pm EST   Two prominent companies, Mozilla and Skype, have joined in opposition to Apple's stance on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Apple recently challenged an exemption to the DMCA proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which would guarantee the legality of jailbreaking iPhones and other handsets. In its formal response, Apple complained that opening the law would risk damage to phones, and encourage breach of contract as well as copyright infringement. [full story]