ActiveState’s CTO and VP of engineering, David Ascher, will helm Mozilla’s new effort to build upon their Thunderbird email client.

Retention rates for usage of the Firefox browser have caused concern for the Mozilla Foundation. They’re brainstorming ways of improving that rate. We’ve got a suggestion for them.

The Mozilla Corporation CEO has announced on her BLOG that Mozilla Thunderbird will be split into a "new, separate organizational setting". The details of which have not been decided on yet, although she has outlined three different options. One thing is a fact strategically this bodes well for both Firefox and Thunderbird projects.

Google announced an open source browser extension that enables web applications to run offline.

Yes, we know Alexa isn’t accurate, in fact it has a number of blindspots, but it’s a easily accessed public web metric. But for checking out the Web2.0-ness of your site, you might like to check out URLFan.com.

A simpler way to store web content for later retrieval on a mobile device is in the works at the Mozilla Foundation.

APC Mag has an interview with Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker, and he basically said that Mozilla is looking into ways to serve the mobile section of the web browsing market, but plans to drag their feet a little longer. Microsoft has been producing an underpowered mobile browser for years now, but Mozilla has had an abandoned red-headed stepchild of a mobile browser, and Baker basically admits that isn’t going to change just yet.

It’s time to stop clinging to Firefox version 1.5 and move on up to 2.0, as the end of life period has not only arrived, but has been extended a little for late movers.

YFirefox Really Wants To See Upgrades Happen

While Firefox has had a version 2 available for some time, the email client Thunderbird has only just matched that version number with its latest release.

Last week, Mozilla announced the development of an addon designed to implement social networking features within its popular Firefox web browser. The company has released an early prototype of the feature, named The Coop, so users can get an initial preview of what’s to come.

Would you want to have social networking features built into whatever browser you use? That’s what Mozilla Labs is hoping as they are adding social networking features into the FireFox browser.

A more measured process to releasing these updates should help Mozilla avoid issues with rolling out an update to its entire userbase in one shot.

I came across an interesting fact today: “The Chinese name for red panda is hunho or firefox, due to their colour and similar size to a fox.” So . . . would the Chinese associate Mozilla’s Firefox browser with a panda bear, despite the fox logo? We’ll soon find out, as Mozilla has announced plans to open a corporate office in Beijing.

It seems that every time Microsoft releases an update to its Internet Explorer browser, there’s a zero-day exploit waiting to be taken advantage of by hackers and identity thieves the world over.

Blake Ross of Mozilla chides Google for giving preferential placement to their own apps as “Tips” in search results.

Mozilla users nearly took to the streets in protest when confronted with the news that Microsoft had acquired the increasingly popular Firefox web browser. Fortunately for Firefox users, reports of Mozilla’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Adobe announced this week that it has contributed source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation as part of a new open source project entitled Tamarin.

Last week, I commented that I think the release version of Internet Explorer 7 should still be regarded as a beta. I’ll be commenting more on that in today’s episode of the FIR podcast.

Well, the FTP link was seen everywhere and almost everybody in the little-ahead – techno-sphere were already playing with the Release Version of Firefox 2.0 from Mozilla even before the official announcement was made.

Last week, Mozilla officially made the second release candidate (RC2) of its popular Firefox browser available for public consumption. As reviews pour in, an interesting debate is brewing amongst developers. Is Firefox 2.0 truly an upgrade from the current incarnation?

Internet Explorer 7 has been primed for release through Microsoft’s Automatic Updates, while the Mozilla Foundation unveiled Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 for their users.