Mozilla Labs » mconnor http://mozillalabs.com Just another mozillalabs.com weblog Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:02:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Sync in Firefox 4 Beta http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/08/24/sync-in-firefox-4-beta/ http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/08/24/sync-in-firefox-4-beta/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:16:08 +0000 mconnor http://2.446 As many of you already know, last week we landed Sync for Firefox 4, and I’m really excited that it will be a part of the next Firefox 4 Beta update.

Sync has been on our radar for a very long time. One of the original goals for Places was to enable this type of add-on, and Weave was one of the first Mozilla Labs prototypes released, near the end of 2007. We’ve been through a number of changes since that time, largely focused on building a stable, scalable service. I moved over from the Firefox team just over a year ago to help make it something we could ship to all of our Firefox users.

Sync is important to me as the first step in evolving how users think about and interact with web services. The dominant model for services right now generally involves trading your personal data (who your friends are, the emails you send, the websites you visit) in exchange for useful services (social networking, bookmark sync, etc). For the vast majority of users, the real decision is simply “which company gets my data?”. That’s not really a great definition of choice.

Sync took a different tack, and started off with “what if we didn’t want the data? What if even having that data was a failure state?” That led us to cryptography. Sync uses strong crypto to encode your data before it is uploaded. The secret phrase is the key to this encryption, and we never send that anywhere to keep your data secure. This really means that Mozilla can’t see your data, giving you full control. (Which is great, because we really don’t want it!)

What’s most exciting is that this is just the first step. Services is a new place for Mozilla to compete and help shape the future of the Web. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but getting Sync into Firefox was a great first step. We really hope users love it as much as we do.

— Mike Connor, on behalf of the Firefox Sync team

]]> http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/08/24/sync-in-firefox-4-beta/feed/ 0 Firefox Sync 1.4 Released http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/06/30/firefox-sync-1-4-released/ http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/06/30/firefox-sync-1-4-released/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:12:11 +0000 mconnor http://2.419 Mozilla is proud to announce the latest release of Firefox Sync is now available for download.  This release includes the following main features:
  • It enables you to give friendly names to identify your computers (John’s Work Laptop, Mary’s Home Desktop etc) which is especially useful when you use Firefox Home, our upcoming iPhone app.
  • It includes some major UI changes in preparation for bringing Firefox Sync to Firefox 4.
  • In addition, we also have numerous performance and stability improvements.

UI Changes in Firefox Sync 1.4

In order to improve the user experience when using Tab Sync, we have added the ability to set a friendly name for your computer, so you can easily tell which tabs are from which devices.  This is designed to improve the user experience for tab sync across all devices, especially for Firefox on mobile devices and the upcoming Firefox Home release.
Firefox 4 is heading in the direction of a simpler and cleaner UI. In preparation for bringing Sync to Firefox 4, we’ve reduced the presence of Firefox Sync in the primary UI for Firefox. To meet the needs of a simpler UI, you can now only access Firefox Sync through the Tools menu versus the previous UI where Sync was available in both the status bar and in the Tools menu.  As we continue to evolve Firefox Sync and scale our server backend, we will sync more frequently for a more seamless user experience, which means this UI would have been a frequent distraction for users.  We’re very interested in constructive feedback about how we can continue to evolve the user experience on our mailing list.

For more information:

]]> http://mozillalabs.com/sync/2010/06/30/firefox-sync-1-4-released/feed/ 0 Weave 0.8 Released http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/11/weave-0-8-released/ http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/11/weave-0-8-released/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:48:39 +0000 mconnor http://mozillalabs.com/?p=3021 We’ve been hard at work over the last month on the next milestone on our path to 1.0, and we’ve just released version 0.8.   In this last pre-beta release we have made a number of changes based on feedback from users around tighter integration with Firefox and Fennec, and improvements to the incremental sync behaviour introduced in 0.7.

For more details about Weave 0.8, please check out the details over at the Weave blog!

]]> http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/11/weave-0-8-released/feed/ 0 Weave 0.7 Released http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/09/weave-0-7-released/ http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/09/weave-0-7-released/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:23:12 +0000 mconnor http://mozillalabs.com/?p=2899 We’ve been hard at work over the last month on the next milestone on our path to 1.0, and we’ve just released version 0.7.   In this release we have continued work on scalability and reliability, user-facing performance, and more exploration of the new interface model that first appeared in 0.6.

For more details about Weave 0.7, please check out the details over at the Weave blog!

]]> http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/09/weave-0-7-released/feed/ 0 Weave 0.5 Released http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/07/weave-0-5-released/ http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/07/weave-0-5-released/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:04:06 +0000 mconnor http://mozillalabs.com/?p=2422 Weave Sync is a prototype that encrypts and securely synchronizes the Firefox experience across multiple browsers, so that your desktop, laptop and mobile phone can all work together. It is part of the Weave project, which aims to integrate services more closely with the browser.

Major Features

What is Weave Sync all about? In short, Weave Sync lets you securely take your Firefox experience with you to all your Firefox browsers — including our mobile browser, codenamed Fennec. It currently supports continuous synchronization of your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs. For example:

  • Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers, so you can get to your favorite sites with just a few keystrokes
  • Continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on any of your Firefox browsers
  • Keep the same list of bookmarks on all of your Firefox browsers
  • Easily sign in to all your favorite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it’s hard to type in complex passwords)
  • Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers, so that only you can access your data

What’s new in 0.5?

If you have not looked at Weave recently, now is a great time to jump in and try it out!  In this release we’ve made a bunch of improvements in terms of reliability and performance.  A few of the major changes are:

  • Major performance improvements during upload and download
  • Sync waits until you’re not actively using the browser
  • Improved support for bookmark tags and smart folders
  • Support for changing passwords and passphrases
  • Support for Fennec on Windows Mobile and Firefox on x86 OpenSolaris
  • Better error handling and reporting

Getting Involved with Testing and Development

– Mike Connor, on behalf of the Weave development team

]]> http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/07/weave-0-5-released/feed/ 5 Weave 0.4.0 Released http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/06/weave-0-4-0-released/ http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/06/weave-0-4-0-released/#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:01:09 +0000 mconnor https://mozillalabs.com/?p=2118 Weave Sync is a prototype that encrypts and securely synchronizes the Firefox experience across multiple browsers, so that your desktop, laptop and mobile phone can all work together. It is part of the Weave project, which aims to integrate services more closely with the browser.

Weave Logo

Major Features

What is Weave Sync all about? In short, Weave Sync lets you securely take your Firefox experience with you to all your Firefox browsers — including our mobile browser, codenamed Fennec. It currently supports continuous synchronization of your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs. For example:

  • Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers, so you can get to your favorite sites with just a few keystrokes
  • Continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on any of your Firefox browsers
  • Keep the same list of bookmarks on all of your Firefox browsers
  • Easily sign in to all your favorite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it’s hard to type in complex passwords)
  • Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers, so that only you can access your data

Weave Cloud

What’s new in 0.4.0?

If you have not looked at Weave recently, now is a great time to jump in and try it out! This release includes a major rewrite of many of Weave’s key components since the last major release in June. A few of the major changes are:

  • Preference syncing (including Personas)
  • Identity support (automatic login, including use of OpenID logins)
  • Better support for addons using Weave
  • Support for Fennec 1.0 beta 2 on Maemo Linux
  • Significant improvements in performance during startup and opening new windows.

Getting Involved with Testing and Development

– Mike Connor, on behalf of the Weave development team

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