Mozilla News: Less Microsoft, No Persona, More Mono, and Less Intrusive Addons
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-18 16:58:13 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-18 16:58:13 UTC
Microsoft
Just days before it was due to be included in Firefox's stable version, Mozilla has announced that its Metro-mode shell for Firefox has been cancelled.
It's been a couple of years since Microsoft delivered Windows 8 and we have never seen the touch-capable "Metro" version of the Firefox browser, designed for Windows 8, that Mozilla had talked up so frequently. Google Chrome, on the other hand, has been available in a Windows 8 Metro version since 2012.
Persona
Over the years Google has started and then abandoned so mamy projects that some people like to say that the company "throws spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick." Now, as Mozilla is shifting its entire company strategy toward mobile technology and focusing on its Firefox OS platform, it may be heading in a similar direction. After touting and actively testing its Persona authentication and sign-on system, the company is stepping down its participation in the project, citing low adoption.
Mono
Mozilla and Epic Games have been working together for some time now, but it looks like they are set to take their partnership to the next level. Last year, the two companies demonstrated Unreal Engine 3, the basis for many games, running in the Firefox browser via the WebGL 3D graphics API and some offshoots of JavaScript. Now, Epic and Mozilla have announced that they are porting Unreal Engine 4 to the web.
Extensions
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Sony recently submitted an enhancement which allows widget like functionality on Firefox OS. Dubbed gadget, it is supposed to allow easy interaction with applications from homescreen and lockscreen. Currently the implementation is being reviewed on bugzilla by the Mozilla team.
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Early last year, I posted a piece on Mozilla radically changing its approach to plugins in the Firefox browser. Plugins and extensions are, of course, part of the reason why many of us chose to use Firefox in the first place. There is a huge ecosystem of useful ones. However, especially since Firefox moved to a rapid release cycle, extensions have cause many performance problems. For that reason, Mozilla has been steadily overhauling its process of handling extensions in Firefox, especially when it comes to extensions that are automatically enabled.
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Mozilla announced back in January 2013 that it planned to eventually require all plugins to be ‘Click to Play’ by default, meaning that users will need to click on plugins in-page in order to enable them and view their content.
JPEG
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Mozilla has announced a new open-source JPEG encoding library, which it says could significantly reduce the amount of network traffic used by the web.
Misc.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- What does that make The Register MS to women?
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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- for scabs aka SEALs
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- The pressure intensifies over time
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- "Four MPs have written to the SRA"
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- claims were de facto abandoned at the trial
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- The corporate media keeps trying - baselessly and in vain - to paint everything that happens with the "hey hi" brush
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- now they just keep experimenting by trashing their sites and reputation
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- Prioritising CoC censorship, not communities
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- This is a moral issue because they betray or harm women and prop up authoritarian regimes
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- Links for the day
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- Does the EPO actually believe in the law?
- 2026 Microsoft Layoff Rumours
- Surely if we had properly-functioning media, then someone would investigate this rather than rely on official statements from Microsoft and WARN notices
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- contact your national representatives about it
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 13 Out of 200: Abuse of Process to Make False Accusations of UKGDPR Violations
- familiar barrister and same lawyers
- Thrown Under the Microsoft Bus
- Microsoft wants disposable contractors
- Quitting IBM and "Rumors of an Upcoming RA [Mass Layoffs] in April 2026"
- Blue layoffs or "RAs" were confirmed upfront by the CFO
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- Distros that adopt systemd are controlled by IBM and GAFAM
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- Fallacies like "zero-sum" - especially in the context of foreign affairs including war - are utterly ruinous
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- Richard Stallman will turn 73
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- In the news throughout the weekend
- Mountains of Abuses of Process by Brett Wilson LLP on Behalf of Americans and Sometimes at the Expense of British Taxpayers
- a virtual "limited liability"
- linuxteck.com FUD by LLM Slop, ubuntupit.com Passes the Slop Baton
- Unless they get back to doing long-form authentic articles, as opposed to slop, no good will come out of it
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- Links for the day
- Sruthi Chandran & Debian Diversity, Favoritism, Hidden Conflicts of Interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- software in the public domain
- Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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