Scooopy – Scoops about Gadget, Mobile & Technology
Archive for December, 2009
WordPress 2.9.1 RC 1 is now available
Dec 30th
WordPress 2.9.1 Release Candidate 1 is now available because the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension. With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly. To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, WordPress Dev Team Members are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line.
RC1 contains a few more fixes, bringing the number of fixed tickets up to 23. If you are already running Beta 1, visit Tools->Upgrade in your blog’s admin to get RC1. You can also download the RC1 package and install manually.
Mozilla Labs Weave 1.0 RC is now available
Dec 27th
Mozilla Labs Weave 1.0 RC is now released.
What’s changed since Beta 3?
- Faster startup times for Firefox and Fennec
- Make tabs available immediately when setting up another computer
- Automatically use the synced lightweight theme (Firefox 3.6+)
- A few more bug fixes related to changing passwords, mobile bookmarks, etc.
Release Notes
- Upgrade all your clients to the latest version
If you are using Weave Sync on multiple computers, you will need to update all of them to the latest version. Weave Sync requires that you use the same version of the addon on all your computers that you want to synchronize data to/from. - Hosting Your Own
If you are hosting your own Weave server, you’ll need to add an apache alias line for the 1.0 URL – your old server will still handle the same API.
More Information
For information about previous versions as well as the latest development snapshots, check out the changelog
WordPress 2.9.1 Beta 1 is now available
Dec 27th
WordPress 2.9.1 Beta 1 is now available because the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension. With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly. To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, WordPress Dev Team Members are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line.
The easiest way to test Beta 1 is to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, elect to get on the point release development track, and then perform an automatic upgrade via the Tools->Upgrade menu. You can also download the Beta 1 package and install manually. Fourteen tickets have been fixed in 2.9.1 Beta 1. The curl problem and a couple of other problems are dependent on specific hosting configurations.
Opera 10.5 pre-alpha is now available
Dec 23rd
Opera 10.5 pre-alpha is now available for downloading & testing.
What’s new
Inside
-
Carakan
Carakan is our new JavaScript engine. It’s fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows (Mac optimization is not as far along). You can read more gritty details regarding register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation in the Opera Core blog.
SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (runs per minute)
-
Presto 2.5
We are now using Presto 2.5, which contains a huge numbers of improvements. It also includes support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features like persistent storage.
-
Vega
Vega is our new graphics library. It’s currently software based and displays everything you see on-screen. Vega can be hardware accelerated, but as you can see from the complex graphics benchmark in Peacekeeper, we don’t seem to need it yet. (Note that Futuremarks Peacekeeper test does no include the results of their complex graphics tests in the overall score. We believe this is wrong in 2009 and will simply be silly if not changed in 2010.)
Peacekeeper Complex Graphic Benchmarks
Outside
-
Platform integration
- On Windows 7/Vista, you will notice a lot of visual changes and use of APIs which allow the UI to display the Aero Glass effect. For Windows 7, we also added Aero Peek and Jump List support to easily access your Speed Dials, Tabs, etc. from the Taskbar.
- For Mac, a complete rewrite in Cocoa brings an Unified Toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multi-touch gestures (try 3-Finger Swipe Left/Right or Pinch to zoom) and a bunch of other small details. We also added Growl notification support.
-
“Private tab” and “Private window”
You can open a new Private tab or Private window that forgets everything that happened on it once closed.
-
Non-modal dialogs
Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay. This allows you to switch tabs or windows while the dialog is still displayed. Similarly, the Password Manager dialog is now anchored at the top of the page won’t block any content as it loads a new page.
-
Address field and Search field improvements
Both fields have been upgraded in looks and functionality. They can now remember searches, support removing items from history and show results in a better layout.
Download
To try it out, you can download the latest Labs build here:
Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 is now available
Dec 22nd
Mozilla community released Firefox 3.6 Beta 5, making it available for free download and issuing an automatic update to all Firefox 3.6 beta users. This update contains over 100 fixes from the last Firefox 3.6 beta, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users.
Over 70% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If your favorite Add-on isn’t yet compatible, you can also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!
The Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features for users to evaluate:
- Support for the HTML5 File API
- A change to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
- The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
- Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
- Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
- Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
- Support for the WOFF font format.
- Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
- Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.
Web developers and Add-on developers should read more detail about the many new features in Firefox 3.6 for developers on the Mozilla Developer Center. For the full list of changes since the alpha release of Firefox 3.6 see this list (it’s big).
If you already have Firefox 3.6 Beta, you should be automatically updated to the latest version. You can also choose to manually “Check for Updates” from the Help menu.
If you’d like to download Firefox 3.6 Beta, please use the following links or visit the Beta Download Page:
- Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 Setup.exe
- Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 5.dmg
- Linux: firefox-3.6b5.tar.bz2
