Mozilla Updates Firefox, Thunderbird

Earlier this week, the Mozilla organization released new versions of its Firefox browser and Thunderbird E-mail client, for all platforms: Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.

The new version, 24.0, of Firefox includes fixes for 17 identified security vulnerabilities, including seven that Mozilla rates as Critical, and four that it rates as High  severity.  It also includes several performance and stability improvements; more information is available in the Release Notes.  You can obtain the new version of FIrefox via the built-in update mechanism, or download a complete installation package, in a variety of languages.

The new version of Thunderbird, also 24.0, has fixes for 13 security vulnerabilities; Mozilla rates six of these as Critical, and three as High severity.  It also includes some new capabilties, including the ability to watch or ignore message threads, and the ability to zoom the composition window.  There are also some miscellaneous bug  fixes.  More detail is available in the Release Notes.   As with Firefox, you can get the new version using the built-in update capability, or download a complete installation package.

Because of the security fixes included in these releases, I recommend that you update your systems as soon as you conveniently can.

Google Releases Chrome 29.0.1547.76

Google has released a new stable version, 29.0.1547.76, of its Chrome browser, for all platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Chrome Frame.  This is primarily a bug fix release, which addresses some display issues, as well as a problem with Flash on some Windows devices.  More information is available in the Release Announcment.

Windows and Mac users should be able to get the new version via the built-in update mechanism. Linux users should check their distribution’s repositories for the new version.