The Mozilla Labs developers have announced Jetpack SDK 0.4, the latest update to the development kit for the Jetpack framework that is pencilled in as the medium term replacement for Firefox's existing extension mechanisms

The Mozilla Labs developers have released version version 0.3 of the Jetpack SDK, adding two high-level APIs

"Mozilla's new Jetpack project makes it easy to enhance the Firefox web browser by using conventional HTML and JavaScript. In this hands-on tutorial, we introduce you to Jetpack and use it to add a Digg counter to the browser's statusbar..."

Mozilla Labs is continuing in its quest to make it as easy to extend the browser as it is to write a Web page. The latest update to Jetpack came out this week, and brought a few new APIs and a gallery of community contributed Jetpacks.

Three new APIs in Mozilla's Jetpack SDK include access to the system clipboard, better in page modal dialogs and toast style notifications

It appears that great minds think alike (or in the case of open-source software and the close-ties between Google and Mozilla, share-alike). Within a week of each other both Mozilla and Google have announced new initiatives to allow for extensions to their browsers to be written using regular HTML / JavaScript and CSS, greatly lowering the bar for developers to join in.

"Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 3 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only. Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now available for download. This is the eleventh developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso. New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include..." -- ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.0b3/linux-i686/

Mozilla Labs has launched a new project, simply called Mozilla Labs Gaming, aimed at helping tame developers create games for the web using open web technologies, such as HTML5, WebGL and fast JavaScript engines

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.1 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.