My name is Ivan. I'm a geek working as a web developer. I love my life. I love my cute girlfriend. I love programming. I love a cup of good coffee, and a bowl of noodles!!!
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Wondering what to do until we hear back from Guinness? How about taking a moment to celebrate all the hardwork that went into Download Day and the launch of Firefox 3. Check out Mozilla Party Central for a party near you or to host your own.
With the same enthusiasm that went into spreading the word about Download Day, the Firefox community has been planning parties with gusto! There are over 700 parties planned worldwide. Here are some of the highlights:
This is just a sampling…and please be reassured that it’s not too late to plan one!
Thanks to OLPC for throwing a Firefox 3 party on launch day!
We’re getting close to handing over our download logs to our judges for our Guinness World Record attempt. We’re very lucky and honored to have Paul Vixie of the Internet Systems Consortium and Corey Shields of Indiana University.
Here is a little background on them both:
Paul Vixiehas been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems as a protocol designer and software architect since 1980, and was a cofounder of ISC in 1994. Early in his career, he developed and introduced SENDS, proxynet, rtty, cron and other lesser-known tools. Paul is considered the primary modern author and technical architect of BIND8, the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet.
Corey Shields is the Lead Systems Analyst for the High Performance Systems group in University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. Corey has had a long history as an open source software user, advocate, and contributor. He has made contributions to many open source projects including Mozilla and the Gentoo Linux distribution, and spent a couple of years managing the Open Source Lab (OSL) at Oregon State University.
Currently, Corey is working with a team of administrators on the BigRed supercomputer at Indiana University. BigRed is the 42nd fastest supercomputer in the world, and relies on open source software to operate and produce results for researchers across the country.
A huge thanks to them for supporting our effort!
The Internet Explorer team at Microsoft sent Mozilla a cake to mark the release of Mozilla Firefox 3. Mozilla Corporation employee Al Billings, who used to be a project manager for the IE team, posted some photographs of the cake, which features a large Internet Explorer 'e' logo and the message, "Congratulations on Shipping! Love, The IE Team".
This isn't the first cake Mozilla has received from Redmond: in 2006, the IE team sent another cake to congratulate Mozilla on the release of Firefox 2. Mozilla Creative Director John Slater took a photograph of the Firefox 3 cake next to the last piece of the Firefox 2 cake, which has apparently been sitting in a freezer for the past twenty months.
Relations between Microsoft and rival browser manufacturers haven't always been so cordial: in 1997 when Internet Explorer 4.0 was released, Microsoft dumped a giant metal IE logo on Netscape's front lawn. Netscape employees responded by tipping over the prop and spray-painting "Netscape Now!" (a slogan used by the browser maker to encourage users to download) on its side. They then placed a statue of Netscape's green Mozilla mascot— described in contemporary reports as being either seven feet (2.1 metres) or twelve feet (3.7 metres) tall — on top of it and adorned it with a placard reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18", a reference to the market shares of the two leading browser vendors at the time.
The official Mozilla Blog reports that there were over eight million downloads of Mozilla Firefox 3 in the twenty-four hours after release, despite the widespread server availability problems. The Spread Firefox Download Day 2008 page has an interactive map showing the numbers of downloads in different countries and Mozilla Corporation CEO John Lilly has a weblog post with more statistics from Firefox 3's first twenty-four hours.
Once the exact figure has been determined and verified by Mozilla's own judges and officials from Guinness World Records, Firefox 3 will be declared the holder of the world record for the most software downloads in twenty-four hours (since the record doesn't exist yet, there's no real doubt that it will be awarded to Firefox 3). The Download Day FAQ has more details about the specifics of the record attempt.
The Blog of Metrics, run by the metrics and analytics team at Mozilla, reports that Firefox 3 had a market share of around four percent at the end of Download Day, based on hour-by-hour tracking of Firefox 3's market share by Net Applications (it was around 0.96 percent when Net Applications began tracking). By comparison, it took Firefox 2 a month to reach 3.62 percent.
Awesome job! I am truly impressed by everyone’s hard work. We exceeded 8 million downloads in our 24 hour period. We’ll need to be patient as our judges and Guinness World Records validate our record attempt. We’ll keep our map up and tracking downloads on Spread Firefox, but our judges will be reviewing the time period from 11:16 a.m. PDT on June 17th to 11:16 a.m. PDT on June 18th.
The Mozilla team at Download Day HQ as the attempt period wrapped! (Photo courtesy of Clare Bayley)
Update: You can catch the close of the 24-hour attempt live on Air Mozilla.
We’re at 7.8 millions downloads with just under an hour to go! Can we break 8 million?
You can still be a part of the world record — just download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) today. Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads. If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.
Let’s go for the gold!
It’s been an awesome morning and afternoon here at Mozilla headquarters. We launched Firefox 3 this morning and immediately felt the love from millions of people all over the world joining us to set a Guinness World Record for most software downloaded in 24 hours.
Our systems were quite busy earlier this morning so individual requests may not have gotten through - but they are all up now and serving a tremendous amount of traffic and downloads. We are currently serving almost 9,000 downloads a minute, which puts us on track to achieve 5-7 million downloads our first day of general availability.
To put some more color behind what’s been happening on this historic day:
Download Day has already been an amazing demonstration of the power of the Mozilla community. Thank you to each and every one of you who’s contributed to a terrific launch of Firefox 3.
Onwards to a new World Record, together!
Attention Firefox fans: Now is your chance to help set a Guinness World Record! We’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads. Phenomenal — let’s see what the next 24 hours has in store!
To be part of the record please download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th. Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads. If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.
Please help us document this history-making event with photos and videos. Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”
Mozilla Firefox 3 has been released. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 46 different localisations, Firefox 3 is the most major Mozilla browser release since the launch of Firefox 2 in October 2006 and represents the culmination of over three years work (development on Firefox 3 began before even Firefox 1.5 came out). According to the press release announcing Firefox 3, the new version has over 15,000 improvements.
Firefox 3 can be downloaded from the redesigned Firefox product page or the Firefox 3.0 directory on releases.mozilla.org (it's not yet being offered to Firefox 2 users via the software update system). More information can be found in the Firefox 3 Release Notes.
The use of newer technologies means that Firefox 3 has higher system requirements than Firefox 2. In Microsoft land, Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 4.0 are no longer supported. On the Mac side, the minimum OS X version jumps from 10.2 Jaguar to 10.4 Tiger. In both cases, the operating system versions that are no longer supported have long since been abandoned by even Microsoft and Apple.
The Mozilla servers have been experiencing problems due to high demand for Firefox 3. This actually delayed the full release of Firefox 3 by more than an hour. According to a Mozilla Developer News weblog post, Firefox 3 is being downloaded more than 14,000 times a minute.
With the launch of Firefox 3, Mozilla is hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in twenty-four hours. The number of downloads so far can be tracked at downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com. Only full, completed downloads count and users have until 11:16am Pacific Daylight Time on Wednesday (6:16pm UTC/GMT) to make a participating download. The official Mozilla Blog has an entry about the Download Day with more details.
Those who just can't get enough of the Firefox 3 launch are invited to attend a Mozilla Party to celebrate or watch the action live from Mozilla HQ on Air Mozilla.
Read the full article for more details about what's new in Firefox 3.
The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!). Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live. The 24 hours period will be clocked from that moment. Thanks for your continued support.
Mozilla Mac developer Josh Aas has written a weblog post discussing some of the under-the-hood improvements specific to the Mac OS X version of Mozilla Firefox 3.
Josh describes how Firefox 3 has largely switched from Apple's legacy Carbon API (initially created to make it easier for developers to migrate OS 9 applications to OS X) to the more modern Cocoa. He also details how Firefox 3 delivers native-looking Aqua-style form controls in Web pages and explains how this actually has very little to do with the change to Cocoa.
Finally, Josh covers how graphics in Firefox 3 are drawn using Core Graphics (which encompasses the Quartz technologies) and ATSUI instead of the deprecated QuickDraw (which has been around in some form or another since the original Macintosh was launched in 1984). This change was achieved by replacing the Mac-specific graphics code with the cross-platform cairo library, which uses Core Graphics and ATSUI on OS X. Core Graphics can take advantage of hardware acceleration to improve performance.
All the changes Josh discusses were implemented in version 1.9 of the core Gecko rendering engine (rather than being specific to Firefox 3), so they will also find their way into other Mozilla-based applications, such as Mozilla Thunderbird (version 3.0 will be based on Gecko 1.9) and Camino (though Camino has used modern OS X technologies since its inception, it will benefit further from the upgrade to Gecko 1.9 in Camino 2.0).
Josh has also written a post outlining plans for more OS X improvements in Gecko 1.9.1, which is scheduled for completion around the end of this year. Much of the work will focus on continuing to remove Carbon code in favour of Cocoa, which will pave the way towards enabling 64-bit versions of Firefox and other Mozilla applications (64-bit OS X programs cannot use Carbon), though this work is unlikely to be finished in the 1.9.1 timeframe. Other improvements may include support for HTML data on the clipboard and reading proxy settings from the system-wide Network preferences.
We’re just over 12 hours until the start of the long-awaited Download Day! Our Guinness World Record attempt will start when Firefox 3 is officially launched at approximately 10:00 a.m. PDT (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday, June 17th.
At that time, please check out the official Download Day site to download Firefox and for a map of worldwide downloads!
Deb Richardson has written a lengthy, screenshot-filled Field Guide to Firefox 3 with information about the new and improved features in Mozilla Firefox 3, which launches on Tuesday.
Topics covered include the Add-ons manager, bookmarks, CSS, support for color profiles, the Downloads window, font and text rendering, browsing history, the <canvas> HTML element, showing non-ASCII characters in the Location bar, malware protection, the Microformats API (for extension developers), password management changes, performance and memory usage improvements, phishing protection, plugins, the Site Identification button, enhanced Location bar autocomplete, tabs, the default theme, audio and video podcast support, integration with Parental Controls on Windows Vista and Web application protocol handlers. Each section of the guide includes links to articles and weblog posts containing more details.
A Simplified Chinese translation of the Field Guide to Firefox 3 is available and Deb has released the Field Guide to Firefox 3 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license to encourage other translations.
Did you miss the buzz about the Firefox Screencast Contest? Don’t worry! There are still plenty of chances to win some prizes, but there’s one catch: you have to submit your screencast before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time today!
Participating only takes a few minutes, and doesn’t require any particular computer or Firefox skills — you just have to pick one of the top 100 knowledge base articles and follow the instructions while recording it with e.g. Jing.
If you’re one of the 100 winners, your screencast will be used in a Knowledge Base article read by thousands and thousands of Firefox users. Not only will you be rewarded with a prize, you will really make a difference to provide invaluable help for all those users.
Our Guinness World Record attempt for the most software downloads in 24 hours is just around the corner! As soon as we roll out Firefox 3 on June 17th you’ll have until the same time on June 18th to download Firefox 3. Don’t worry about forgetting — our friends at Mozilla Hispano and Felipe Gomes of Brazil have created countdown tickers for your blog or Firefox! Felipe’s ticker add-on will also count down the 24 hours as soon as our attempt starts!
Please remember that we’re only counting complete downloads. If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.
Don’t forget that Guinness would like to see images and videos of our global Download Fests. Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”
Thanks for all of the hard work — we’re almost there!
Deb Richardson, author of the about:mozilla newsletter, has done it again! She has already graced the Mozilla Blog with wonderful explanations of Firefox 3’s AwesomeBar, and the new and improved bookmarking system. And now she has a created a comprehensive guide to all the cool new features in Firefox 3.
Check it out and remember to download Firefox 3 when it’s available on June 17th to be a part of our world record attempt!
The Mozilla Developer News weblog is carrying an announcement that the final version of Mozilla Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday 17th June.
"After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready," the message says. "It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th."
It should be noted that there is still a small chance that a show-stopper bug could delay the release. However, barring any unforeseen disasters, Firefox fans can now circle next Tuesday in their calendars as Firefox Download Day when millions of users will attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. Anyone planning to host a Mozilla Party on the actual Firefox 3 launch day now also knows which date to target.
The third and final release candidate of Firefox 3 was made available earlier today with a workaround for a Mac OS X bug.
Editor’s note: Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 3 pm PST. See Mike Beltzner’s comprehensive post on Mozilla Developer News, crossposted below.
This third Firefox 3 Release Candidate is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this release.
The third Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. It contains a single change for Mac OS X users only; there is no change for users running previous Firefox Release Candidate versions on Windows or Linux. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed in the minutes of the Firefox 3 Planning Meetings, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.
You can find out more about the new Features of Firefox 3 in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.
Testers can download the third Firefox 3 Release Candidate builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.
Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Release Candidate announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.
In an additional Mozilla Developer News post, Mike Beltzner also announces that we anticipate the general release of Firefox 3 to be on this coming Tuesday, June 17.
A third release candidate of Mozilla Firefox 3 has been issued with a workaround for a bug introduced in the latest 10.5.3 update of Mac OS X. The problem causes the operating system to hang on shutdown if an application tries to open the VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin file, which is a browser plugin included in OS X and accessed by Firefox under certain circumstances. Though the bug is not caused by Mozilla code, the developers have decided to include a workaround in Firefox 3 to prevent users from being exposed to the hang. The problem has also been reported to Apple.
Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 can be downloaded from the Firefox release candidates download page or the 3.0rc3 directory of releases.mozilla.org. Existing Firefox 3 release candidate testers can also upgrade using the built-in software update feature of the browser. Note that although RC3 builds are available for Windows and Linux, they do not contain any changes from RC2; only the OS X builds are different.
The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 Release Notes contain general information about the improvements in Firefox 3. Technical information about the specific OS X 10.5.3 VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin issue can be found in bug 436575.
Interested community members are invited to take part in a Firefox 3 RC3 Testday on Friday. The virtual event will take place in the #testday irc.mozilla.org channel on Friday 11th June between 7:00am and 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (2:00pm Friday to midnight Saturday UTC/GMT).
As well as Firefox 3, the VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin bug introduced by OS X 10.5.3 also affects Firefox 2. For this reason, the workaround has been checked in to the 1.8 branch and will presumably be included in the next minor update of Firefox 2. Other Mozilla-based applications may also be impacted.
Update: The Firefox 3 RC3 Testday will take place on Friday 13th June, not the non-existent Friday 11th June as stated above.
We broke the million mark for worldwide pledges to get Firefox 3 on Download Day thanks to all of your hard work! Kudos to the Firefox community. This is quite a feat.
It’s not too late to keep spreading the word. Here are some easy ways to get involved:
Again, we’ll let you know the actual date for Download Day as soon as we can!
