TenFourfox 4.0 final released!

Since we don't get the official Firefox 4, I figured, why wait for the official release date? So go get it. This release fixes a subtle but nasty crash glitch in the JavaScript accelerator, fixes some more Command-shortcuts once and for all, and should also resolve trouble with window stacking. I've been using it myself on my G5 and iBook G4 for the last week and it's great. You'll love it too.

I should add one note about the build: before I left for my mini-vacation, Mozilla had been planning to make RC1 into 4.0 final, and I left the G5 buildhost to chug out the various architectures while I gallivanted around the coast. Mozilla then made a quick late-breaking announcement and popped out an RC2 with these fixes for bug 642395. Don't bother trying to look at the bug as it's sec-locked and I'm not part of the Mozilla security group either; just look at the diffs. It appears these changes are to temporarily blacklist certain certificates issued by Usertrust and I don't know why yet despite some cursory snooping around. The nature of the fix suggests this is temporary and of limited import, so rather than invalidating a whole lot of build work which has already been certified, I have elected to push out TenFourFox final relative to RC1 (those marked changes are the only difference between RC2 and RC1) unless I discover that the issue in question is more severe. If these patches are still in the tree by the time the next maintenance security/stability release comes due, then they will become part of TenFourFox also.

Which brings us to our next point: will there be point releases for Firefox 4? Signs point to yes. This is very good news, because I am hoping that Cairo 1.10 lands on mozilla-2.0 and helps our software rendering performance (see issue 7). If nothing else, it keeps us stabilized until we must do battle with Firefox 5. That will be the subject of a post to be made in the very near future.

For builders who want to build on this new stable (ho ho ho) basis, there are now new build instructions and the changesets for 4.0 final are relative to mozilla-2.0, not mozilla-central (although necessarily they would probably still largely apply there too). You probably want to clone mozilla-2.0 separately if you want to make your own builds off that stable branch and use those changesets. New changesets for "Firefox 5" are a totally separate topic, but assuming that we make the jump to Fx5 (again, a subject for a post coming soon), I will not be popping out separate beta changesets until Fx5 has itself entered beta -- i.e., no alpha changesets, sorry, unless there is significant demand.

In security news, Adobe Flash is once again being actively attacked. Adobe's advisory implies, but does not state clearly, that a fix will be issued for 10.1 (or PowerPC). This fix is supposed to come out sometime this week. If Adobe does not fix this for PPC, then watch out. Remember, plugins are deprecated in 4.0, and will be pref'ed off in the next major release. Get your Flashblock on now; it works fine with TenFourFox.

Anyway, go grab TenFourFox 4.0 final and make sure to flaunt it in the faces of your weenie Intel Mac-using friends. They'll be oh so jealous. ;)