Mozilla

Sigh...another round of security updates coming from the folks at Mozilla. It looks like version 1.5.0.7 will be at our doorsteps soon.  Now at home, updating Firefox and Thunderbird on the Windows PC is a snap since it is all automatic. However, updating in a secure enterprise environment is a different matter.

In most enterprises, most users don't have administrative privileges and without those rights Firefox and Thunderbird in most cases will not auto install the new version. What would really help is if Mozilla would provide their software in a MSI package. Until MSI packages are provided by Mozilla, it is difficult for me to accept Firefox and Thunderbird as "enterprise software". In a Windows Server 2003 environment, MSI packages are a must for easy deployment, management, and auditing.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 was released today. This update was released mainly for stability improvements and security fixes. A list of known vulnerabilities fixed with this updated version of Firefox can be found at Mozilla by clicking here. From the Mozilla Developer DevNews:

Just wanted to write a quick note that the first actual beta for Firefox 2 has been released. I'm proud to say that I'm currently using the beta Internet browser as I'm writing this post. The built-in spell checker for text boxes (found in on-line forms and Web content management systems) works great! I'm also pleased to say, that the spell checker works with TinyMCE.

A couple months ago, I posted some of the features that were likely to be included in Firefox 2.0 once it reaches final release. My original list of features wasn't too far off the mark. According to the release notes, the following are new features that have been included since Firefox 1.5 was released:

Mozilla's Mitchell Baker wrote an interesting post about product development. As you develop a product and customer loyalty there is a risk to making too many changes to a product. However, the success of your product likely came about because of innovation. If you kill off introducing new ideas and concepts for your product you are also likely to kill off the reason your product became successful in the first place.