TenFourFox FPR11 available

TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 11 final is now available for testing (downloads, hashes, release notes). Issue 525 has stuck, so that's being shipped and we'll watch for site or add-on compatibility fallout (though if you're reporting a site or add-on that doesn't work with FPR11, or for that matter any release, please verify that it still worked with prior versions: particularly for websites, it's more likely the site changed than we did). There are no other changes other than bringing security fixes up to date. Assuming no problems, it will go live tomorrow evening as usual.

FPR12 will be a smaller-scope release but there will still be some minor performance improvements and bugfixes, and with any luck we will also be shipping Raphaël's enhanced AltiVec string matcher in this release as well. Because of the holidays, family visits, etc., however, don't expect a beta until around the second week of January.

Edge gets Chrome-plated, and we're all worse off

I used to think that WebKit would eat the world, but later on I realized it was Blink. In retrospect this should have been obvious when the mobile version of Microsoft Edge was announced to use Chromium (and not Microsoft's own rendering engine EdgeHTML), but now rumour has it that Edge on its own home turf -- Windows 10 -- will be Chromium too. Microsoft engineers have already been spotted committing to the Chromium codebase, apparently for the ARM version. No word on whether this next browser, codenamed Anaheim, will still be called Edge.

In the sense that Anaheim won't (at least in name) be Google, just Chromium, there's reason to believe that it won't have the repeated privacy erosions that have characterized Google's recent moves with Chrome itself. But given how much DNA WebKit and Blink share, that means there are effectively two current major rendering engines left: Chromium and Gecko (Firefox). The little ones like NetSurf, bless its heart, don't have enough marketshare (or currently features) to rate, Trident in Internet Explorer 11 is intentionally obsolete, and the rest are too deficient to be anywhere near usable (Dillo, etc.). So this means Chromium arrogates more browsershare to itself and Firefox will continue to be the second class citizen until it, too, has too small a marketshare to be relevant. Then Google has eaten the Web. And we are worse off for it.

Bet Mozilla's reconsidering that stupid embedding decision now.