Mozilla is looking to streamline the process of multiple extension installation with a new webapp called Fashion Your Firefox. In a nutshell, Fashion Your Firefox identifies a handful of browsing types, from the "Finder and Seeker" ("I want to make finding information on the Web simpler and more relevant to me.") to the Digital Pack Rat ("I want a hassle-free way to keep track of my favourite sites, bookmarks, blogs and, well, everything!"), then suggests popular extensions for each type of user. Just click through each list of suggestions, cherry pick the extensions you're interested in, and then click Install my Add-Ons.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Lightning and Sunbird, Mozilla's calendar and task-management apps, have upgraded to 0.9 releases that fix hundreds of bugs and improve functionality. Along with general fixes to stability and memory consumption, the calendar views in both the stand-alone Sunbird and Thunderbird add-on Lightning have overhauled, and events that span multiple days now actually look like they do so. This is the last release Lightning will see as an add-on, as it's being integrated into Thunderbird 3, so Thunderbird 2 users should definitely make the upgrade. Sunbird and Lightning are free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems; Google Calendar users, the essential Provider extension still works with this release.

Mozilla Labs announces the winners of their official Extend Firefox 3 Contest, and they're an impressive crop of new and updated extensions for your favourite browser. I was honored to serve on the judging panel for this year's contest (alongside some huge names in the browser biz), and we rated the entries based on how easy they were to use, and how well they took advantage of new features in Firefox 3. Let's take a look at this year's best new and updated add-on grand prize winners.

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The newest version of Mozilla's experimental browser-syncing tool, Weave, just hit the net, and it's seen a few marked improvements since it was first available. Going beyond bookmarks, Weave can match up your Firefox 3 settings, cookies, browsing history, and even tabs between browsers, with experimental support for passwords and form data—in other words, just about everything except extensions, themes, and plug-ins. There's a lot more to come, and it's still a pretty rough around the edges—this is, after all, just version 0.2—but follow along after the jump to see some of what Weave can do, or at least one day will do, to keep your Firefox browsing consistent and convenient.

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Among all the projects available at the Mozilla Foundation, one little application, Prism (formerly known as WebRunner), hasn't gotten much attention. Understandable, in a way, because Prism seems like just a stripped-down Firefox window in which to view web sites—which it is, but that can be a great thing. With the help of a few utilities, web applications in Prism can be just as convenient to launch and use as your standard-installation desktop programs. Let's take a look at where Prism really works and how to get more out of it after the jump.

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It seems like a lot of people might grumble about iTunes but they keep using it. But a Wired piece on open source music player Songbird caught my eye yesterday. Built on the Mozilla platform, it's aiming to be as customisable as Firefox, and describes itself as a "desktop media player mashed up with the web".

What does this mean? Songbird was designed for people to be able to access music from the web as well as from their own computer's music collection. So it includes a web browser for streaming and downloading music. When you navigate to a page which has embedded music on it, Songbird will display a simple playlist window of all the available music on that page so you don't need to hunt for the links. Nice.

I'm curious, and I'm downloading it right now as I type. If you've tried Songbird, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

Songbird Music Player Challenges iTunes with Major Update [Wired]

If you've returned home from the holidays having evangelised to your friends and family about the wonders of Firefox, you'll be thrilled to know that Mozilla has just launched a new live chat support service. The support staff is volunteer-only (they're just kind Firefox users looking to lend a hand) and support is not 24 hours, but what a great bookmark for that new Firefox installation you added to your parents' computer—or your own.

Ever since Google updated the web-based Google Talk gadget, I've firmly felt that the web-based Google Talk is head and shoulders above the desktop client (if you don't need file transfer or voice calls, that is). Last week we told you about Prism, Mozilla's update to the stripped-down browser and web application environment WebRunner. Put the two together (using this URL when you create the Prism application) and you've got what feels very much like a desktop version of the Google Talk gadget. Prism is still very early in development, currently Windows-only, and—honestly—requires way more memory than I'd like (around 30MB for my Google Talk), but with more time and development, the single-use approach to web applications as desktop apps could catch on. Thanks Jon!