Posts Tagged: firefox

Firefox 11 Released!

Firefox 11
In what’s been an almost monthly event now since August last year, Mozilla team have released another major increment to the version number of their Firefox web browser! Firefox 11 is now available for download. Once again, we’re bringing you this news before Mozilla have even updated their own Release Notes for Firefox 11!

Mozilla have also confirmed this past week that development work has now begun on a version of Firefox specifically for the new “Metro” interface of Windows 8.

One interesting point that Mozilla programmer Brian Bondy notes about this version of Firefox for the Windows 8 Metro interface, is that Microsoft have imposed restrictions. These restrictions mean that the “Metro” version of Firefox will only work if Firefox has been selected as the default web browser within Windows 8.

Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8We’ll be keeping a close eye on Windows 8 as it draws ever closer to a full release later this year. It’s currently in “Beta” – or as Microsoft are now calling it “Consumer Preview”. We have already tested our online room scheduling software, MIDAS, on Windows 8 Consumer Preview in the brand new Internet Explorer 10 (which is not currently available for earlier versions of Windows). We can confirm that the latest version of MIDAS is fully compatible with this new release of Internet Explorer!


Firefox 10
Following Mozilla’s recent trend of releasing a major browser update just about every month, Firefox 10.0 has just been released!

Once again, we’re bringing you this news before Mozilla have even updated their Release Notes for Firefox 10.0 to reflect that 10.0 is no longer in beta!

Our browser-based room booking app, MIDAS, is fully compatible with the very latest versions of ALL 5 main browsers, including Firefox 10.0.

We continue to work hard to ensure that whatever new browser versions the five main vendors put out, MIDAS will function correctly in all of them!

In other recent Firefox news…

Mozilla announced earlier this month it’s plans to introduce an “Extended Support Release” edition of Firefox.

According to their blog:

“The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform”

Source: Mozilla Blog

This idea is still just a proposal, and we here at MIDAS HQ personally hope that this doesn’t happen.

Why? Well, it will create more work for developers and really hold back their creativity and ability to take advantage of new and emerging web technologies. Developers would have to support an additional version of Firefox that could be up to a year out of date!

But let’s wait and see whether Mozilla move forward with their ESR proposals.


Firefox 9In what’s now becoming an almost monthly event, the Mozilla team have released yet another major version of their web browser, Firefox 9! Once again, we’re able to bring you this news “hot off the press”. In fact, so fresh is this news that Mozilla have yet to update their Release Notes for Firefox 9 yet!

It’s looks like the browser war between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome is really hotting up now too! Less than a week ago, Google also released a major update Google Chrome 16. In the same week, Microsoft also announced that in 2012, Internet Explorer will keep itself up-to-date. This follows in the footsteps of Firefox and Chrome which already do this.

…and if that wasn’t enough web browser news, Google Chrome 15 is now the “world’s number one browser”. That’s if the reports over the numbers over at StatCounter are to be believed.

Google Chrome 15StatCounter claims that in the last two weeks of November and the first week of December, Chrome 15 was used by 24 percent of web browser users worldwide. This compares to only 22.9 percent for IE8. It’s the first time in StatCounter’s history that a non-Microsoft browser has reached the top spot on its statistics.

These results show that Google’s Chrome web browser is definitely gaining more and more users worldwide. Just a couple of weeks ago, StatCounter claimed that Chrome overtook Mozilla’s Firefox to become the world’s number two web browser in terms of cumulative web browsers rather than specific versions.

So it looks like there’s going to be some fierce competition between the 5 main browsers in 2012. We can can expect version numbers to continue incrementing at an ever increasing rate as that all important market share is hotly contended for!

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully compatible with the very latest versions of ALL 5 main browsers. We will continue to work hard during 2012 to make sure that whatever new browser versions the 5 main vendors put out, MIDAS will run in all of them!


Google ChromeJust over a month ago we reported that by the end of 2011, Chrome may have overtaken Firefox to become the second most used web browser. Well, according to new data from StatCounter this has now happened!

Google Chrome now has a 25.69 percent worldwide market share. This compares to Mozilla Firefox with 25.23 percent share. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still in the lead however with a 40.63 percent share of the browser market.

Ok, so the difference between Chrome and Firefox’s share is only 0.46%, but this milestone of Chrome overtaking Firefox is still very significant. That’s considering Chrome’s global market share has already gained an impressive 10.8 percent this year alone. This big leap in usage comes at the expense of Firefox, which lost 5.5 percent, and Internet Explorer loosing 6.3 percent share of the market in 2011.

According to StatCounter’s CEO:

“We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally. Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also.”

– Aodham Cullen, CEO of StatCounter

Earlier this week, Microsoft released their 4th developer preview of Internet Explorer 10. IE10 is expected to be released to coincide with the launch of Windows 8 in the latter half of 2012.

But you can be sure that the folks over at Mozilla won’t take the news that Chrome has overtaken them lightly!

…so it certainly looks like the Browser War will hot up even more in 2012!

But you can be confident that our ongoing commitment to support our room booking system in the latest releases of all 5 major browsers will continue throughout 2012!