Software

As we mentioned more than a month ago, Firefox 3 is expected to sport a new look. Some of the more popular online magazines are starting to take notice and helping to fan some excitement on the new look. On a blog at Wired a Firefox 3 related post can be found, Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3's Sleek, Sexy New Digs.

Some of the changes planned for the final release of Firefox 3 include a complete visual makeover with platform-specific skins designed to integrate the look of Firefox into your OS of choice.

Michael Kaply is starting a new series on the use of Mozilla's Firefox as enterprise software.  In Part 1 he discusses the obstacles for Firefox to to be adopted in the enterprise.

As Firefox gains marketshare, there comes a point where increasing that marketshare depends on the adoption of Firefox in large enterprises. This article investigates what type of issues arise when supporting Firefox in a large enterprise, and what can be done to solve those issues.

The primary areas I will address are:

Yesterday, InfoWorld posted an article on the yet-to-be-released Firefox 3. The article is titled, "Firefox 3.0 opens door to Web apps, Mozilla says".

If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right now being souped up by an anxious group of gearheads.

When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

This is an interesting debate. Is Microsoft really being a monopoly when it comes to securing and patching its own operating system? Shouldn't we expect to be able to buy a computer operating system that is secure so we don't need anti-virus software in the first place? It is interesting, the marketplace for consumer products that Microsoft inadvertently created is upset at Microsoft for reducing the need to buy third-party. So what, consumers should have a less secure operating system and be required to buy a third party anti-virus software? BusinessWeek reports:

Believe it or not, but the first time I tried the Opera Web browser was a month ago. Until recently, I was content in calling Mozilla's Firefox the alternative browser. Opera 9 is now out and contains a wide range of features. Some of the features unique to Opera and not provided by Internet Explorer and Firefox includes BitTorrent built into the browser and Site Preferences. Site preferences allows you to accept cookies and pop-ups according to specific sites you're visiting (as opposed to settings for all sites you visit with the browser).

This could be interesting for those that work with MS Word...the 2007 version will have blogging capability. It will be intesting to see how well Word will be compatible with third-party CMS applications.