Mozilla Flyweb: How to get rid of custom apps to communicate with IOT devices…

Mozilla has an interesting project called flyweb. If you want to know what it is about and why you should have a look at it watch this video.

https://air.mozilla.org/friday-plenary-flyweb/video/

This specification aims to allow web applications to connect with and communicate to each other over local-area transport protocols. In particular, this specification aims to bring the web’s client/server application model to inter-device communication. The web’s application architecture enables an application running on a server to dynamically and incrementally send application state and logic to an intermittently connected client. This model enables a powerful multi-homed application architecture.

The end of the Iceweasel Age?

One of my most visited blogposts is the one explaining why there exists something called iceweasel the browser and summarizing the reasons why debian renamed firefox. Now there has been some new activities which I don’t want to hide from you.

For roughly the past decade, Debian has shipped the Mozilla desktop applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey) in a rebranded form that replaces the original, trademarked names and logos with alternatives (Iceweasel, Icedove, and Iceape). Originally, this effort was undertaken to work around incompatibilities between the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), the Mozilla trademark-usage policy, and the licenses of the Mozilla logos. But times—and policy wordings—change, and Debian now seems poised to resume calling its packages by the original, upstream Mozilla names.
(Source: lwn.net)

So it seems that the iceweasel package some of you know and love may be gone in the future.

Firefox 3.5 commercial

There is a Mozilla Firefox 3.5 commercial which is quite similar to a car commercial. I don’t like it that much. What do you think about it?

Source: Netzpolitik.org

A look at memory usage in Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is making a lot of progress and there is even some research going on in the field of memory usage.

As the web and web browsers have matured, people have started expecting different things out of them. When we first released Firefox, few people were browsing with tabs or add-ons. I’ve written before about how web usage patterns have changed, so too have our strategies on how to effectively make use of system resources such as memory.

Topics that are discussed in some details are

• Reduced Memory fragmentation
• Fixed cycles with the Cycle collector
• Tuned our caches
• Adjusted how we store image data
• Hunted down leaks
• Measuring Memory Use
• Ways to test

A really good read to get an overview of what is done to make firefox 3 better…
Source: Lwn.net

Firefox and google… an unholy alliance?

There is a lot of criticism about the status of googles financial support for mozilla. This is because $56 million of the $66 million mozilla earned last year were coming from google.
Cnet has an article describing some points why google indeed has to much power and influence in mozilla.

I can see the points and agree with them.. mozilla has to rethink their financial model… Being so much dependent from google is not a good thing.
But you have to stay in perspective… at least it’s free and open software. So there are less danger to loose the application at a whole or to get nasty surprises while using it (LESS not NONE).