Mozilla: Firefox 63, TenFourFox FPR10, Servo Progress

• Firefox 63 Released with Tab Switcher Changes, More Robust Web Extensions

  Firefox 63 is the first version of the web browser to run web extensions (previously known as add-ons) in their own processes on Linux systems. Firefox already runs “out-of-process extensions” in its Windows and Mac builds. Although largely a technical change it should lead to some tangible performance benefits, and help improve the overall security and stability of Firefox. Should an add-on crash or have a memory leak it can no longer take the rest of the browser (or its tabs) with it.

• Cameron Kaiser: TenFourFox FPR10 available

  TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 10 final is now available (downloads, hashes, release notes). This version is live now. Other than outstanding security updates, in this version I also retracted the change (by flipping the pref) for unique data URL origins in issue 525 because of some reported add-on incompatibility. I'm looking at a way add-ons can get around this with their existing code for FPR11, but you're warned: many sites rely on this behaviour to reduce their cross-site scriping surface, and we will have to turn it back on sooner or later. The changes for FPR11 (December) and FPR12 will be smaller in scope mostly because of the holidays and my parallel work on the POWER9 JIT for Firefox on the Talos II. For the next couple FPRs I'm planning to do more ES6 work (mostly Symbol and whatever else I can shoehorn in) and to enable unique data URI origins, and possibly get requestIdleCallback into a releaseable state. Despite the slower pace, however, we will still be tracking the Firefox release schedule as usual.

• RGSoC wrap-up - Supporting Responsive Images in Servo

  Hey everyone, this is Nupur Baghel and Paavini Nanda, from the team “101 Days of Summer”. Both of us are computer engineering undergraduate students from New Delhi, India. We were involved with Servo this summer under the Rails Girls Summer of Code program and spent an amazing 3 months implementing functionalities to support responsive images in Servo <3

• This Week In Servo 116

  In the past weeks, we merged 61 PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.

RISC OS Liberated

• Acorn Computer's RISC OS operating system finally goes fully open source

  RISC OS, the operating system that powered Acorn Computer's Archimedes computers in the 1980s and 1990s, has been fully released to open source. The move was welcomed by Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton: "RISC OS is a great demonstration of how much performance a well-tuned operating system and user interface can wring out of a platform. Moving to a free open source licence should bring a renewed interest to RISC OS." The shift to open source will enable the operating system to be used in new environments and markets, according to RISC OS Developments director Andrew Rawnsley. "This move unlocks a lot of opportunities for RISC OS that were previously inaccessible due to former licence restrictions. We look forward to seeing the exciting projects that this makes possible," said Rawnsley.

• Roughly 30 years after its birth at UK's Acorn Computers, RISC OS 5 is going open source

  RISC OS was designed and developed by Acorn Computers, once dubbed the Apple of Britain, in the 1980s to run on the fledgling 32-bit Arm processor family, also designed by Acorn. Yes, the Arm that now powers the world's smartphones, embedded electronics, Internet-of-Things, and more, although it's come a long way since its mid-1980s genesis. The operating system, meanwhile, began life as the rough-around-the-edges Arthur 1.20 in 1987 for the ARM2-powered Archimedes A305 and A310, and by 1989, had morphed into the more slick RISC OS 2, written mostly in handcrafted assembly language for performance and memory-footprint reasons.

Android Leftovers

• A look at the Android Market (aka Google Play) on its 10th Anniversary

• Charge Anywhere to distribute certified PIN on Glass and Rugged Android POS Terminals

• Honor Magic 2 leak shows off a Huawei P20 Pro lookalike and a pop-up camera

• Chrome OS 'Better Together' integration w/ Android Messages rolling out on Developer channel

• Mozilla Firefox to Start Selling ProtonVPN Subscriptions; Android Version 36 Brings Picture-in-Picture Video Support

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