Android fixed already...
...as version 16.0.1 landed earlier today when my phone did an app update.
A hole in Firefox 16 makes it possible for a malicious site to access a user's browsing history, Mozilla security chief Michael Coates revealed in a blog yesterday. Coates promised a patch today for the vulnerability in the latest version of the browser. Mozilla 16 was released on Tuesday but pulled a day later because of the …
Nigel, the vulnerability you are thinking of involved guessing what pages the user might have browsed,
and then checking what colour a link to them would be rendered as. Most examples used the root page of common websites.
This sounds like a nefarious page can read the either the full history list of the browser, or a least the backwards/forwards list of the current tab.
Didn't upgrade to 16 because it reported that my Firefox 3 Theme wouldn't work, and I can't stand what they did to the UI in FF4 and later.
It took me far too long to get things back as I wanted them when I upgraded from an old FF3, I don't want that pain again. (btw the FF3 theme is at http://ffaddons.game-point.net/ff3ff4/ and no I'm not connected to that - just credit where credit is due)
Just goes to show, always let other people be the guinea pigs!
Strange to think that Firefox is as old now as IE5 was when Firefox launched, and still had a commanding market share.
Lots to contemplate about parallels between them, and how web browsers and the market has changed since then (including social networking sites replacing many personal and small business websites).
Makes you wonder where we'll be in another 7 years. I think the days of the independent web designer are drawing to a close. How quaint it seems in retrospect that people paid off their mortgages, bought fast cars and still have a fortune in the bank because they could hand-code HTML 3.2 and make incredibly complicated table layouts...
I know that this is off topic, but the AC@13:13 made me think.
What we need now IMHO is a lightweight fast browser, without all of the historical cruft.
... wait a minute...
Wasn't that the primary reason Firefox was introduced back then as a response to Netscape Communicator?
Well when Firefox launched, everyone was slagging off IE5 for being bug ridden and insecure whilst claiming Firefox was flawless and perfectly secure.
Now people don't really bash IE anymore because it's too much of a cliche and MS are no longer leaving it rot. Whereas Firefox seems to get the most amount of public abuse because the perception of it is pretty much what the perception of IE5 was back then. Not as bad, but there's a reason Chrome market share keeps going up.
Whether it's true or not, just look around a few non-techie forums where normal people spend their time gossiping about Katie Price and Downton Abbey and you'll see Chrome being recommended as a replacement of Firefox by all those Mr/Mrs Averages. Just like the same kinds of people used to offer peer advice/pressure to switch from IE to Firefox in 2005.
I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome is being knocked by average users seven years from now in favour of some other browser...
Every time I blink another week has passed and another version of FF is out. What's next? Windows 9 by December the holidays? Next time someone says my FF browser's out of date I'm reaching through the interwebs and slapping the chap. Best of luck with the patch, FF 17 will be out before it's released. (9_9);;
It is said that one reason for these lightning fast browser iterations is to assist the web developers, implementing new features as soon as possible. As a not exactly ex web developer it's making my head spin and in some cases breaking code faster than I can fix it...
This thinking might be naive but can we just slow it down a bit, put in some decent testing that is more than just passing a test suite, and just maybe there is more chance at catching these things before they hit a mainstream release?
Maybe I should get a few shipments of Cadbury's Caramel over to the Mozilla and for that matter Google folks... (ooh I might be showing my age referencing that advert)