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I use thunderbird with IMAP and it works fine, so it might be time to give it another shot. The server side software does matter though... I used to have my mail on Godaddy's e-mail service and that sucked. For instance, if you tried to move more than 500 e-mails at once it would crap out (for example if you're reorganizing stuff and want to move stuff over somewhere)

I now run my own dovecot server and it works great.

install a firefox plugin that syncs bookmarks

I'd be more interested in syncing the smart-bar/history/saved form fields than the bookmarks,

Check out Firefox sync. It syncs everything, bookmarks/smart-bar/history/saved passwords etc. You can even see "tabs from other computers" in the history menu which is pretty handy. It does store stuff on Mozilla's servers but it encrypts it locally before uploading it. I also believe (but I'm not 100% certain) you have the option to use your own server

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/sync/

Firefox is the #2 browser in Europe.

http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2009/03/19/what-is-firefoxs-market-share/

http://www.atinternet-institute.com/en-us/browsers-barometer/firefox-march-2007/index-1-2-3-77.html

If beta 3 has been out for about a week?

From the release notes:
> JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations.
> More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
> Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.

Instead, when a user opens an app they should be asked at the time of access to a resource if it's OK to access that resource. Now here I'm sure you start to be reminded of Vista UAC and innumerable "Are you sure" dialogs. But I don't mean every tine, I mean only once or twice and then the app is granted that permission permanently.

Yes it means that an app could potentially do something later on after being granted some permission. But it also would block a lot of obviously wrong things from working, like opening a media player and then being asked if it's OK to SMS a big ol' number you do not recognize.

You mentioned the shortcomings yourself; this wouldn't stop any serious malware author. They would either wait out whatever "trial period" you impose, or find a clever way to masquerade their malice to seem innocent. With application models like these, you really can't beat around the bush, and solutions that try and mitigate will only find their limits probed, explored, and worked around.

If you have to rely on that, the system will not work. Users don't want to, and will not be "educated" to. They want to buy and use something. You can't make users do something they don't want to, any more than force everyone to carefully listen to the flight attendants on an airline explain the safety procedures beforehand.

Education isn't as impossible as you seem to think it is. It is a compromise between the vendors and the users. I'll use browsers as examples: you'll never get Joe Averageuser to validate SSL certificate roots of trust by clicking through dialogues. You will, however, get very far giving him a simple piece of advice, like check the color of the bar before you use a banking website.

That is what phone OS's need to be designed to do (and they are, hence the "bullshit" in my title). They need to simplify the absurdly-complex system that is a mobile phone down to a manageable set of qualities that everyday users can handle and make intelligent decisions based on. You will always find your idiots, but smart OS / UI design can put the top 99% of people in a position to make the right call, and that's very powerful.

Existing mobile phone UIs certainly have plenty of room to grow, but the vendors understand the psychological and intellectual landscape, and I believe strongly that they are moving in the right direction at a very respectable pace.

Just install NoScript and be done with it.

NoScript is great, but it doesn't prevent CSS-based browser history sniffing, if I understand correctly.

"Jackson said most users see that as the biggest attraction to private mode."

Nonsense. The biggest attraction of private mode is that hotteennymphosexkittens.com doesn't show up in the suggestions when someone borrows your computer to check Hotmail.

If you want real privacy you shouldn't be trusting a web browser privacy mode.

Good point, but I thought the attraction was so web sites can't sniff your browsing history.

It won't run the latest Safari (requires 10.5 and up) or iTunes (ditto). Firefox 4 won't be runnable either when it's released. So you wasted ~$200 on OS X upgrades, whereas I spent $0.00 upgrading my Win98 laptop that still runs virtually everything.

I just used install discs from other computers I bought along the way. So it didn't cost me anything either.

And it's pretty weak sauce to complain a version of firefox not even out yet (!) won't run on it. COme to think of it - Firefox 4 will support 98? Seems unlikley. Wait a second - YOUR computer can't even run the current version of Firefox, mine can.

Basically at this point we are all laughing at you thinking that a Win98 installation on a computer of any speed is equal to Tiger.

If for some reason it eventually bothers me I can't run a newer version of Firefox I'll simply install Linux.

And as I said I still have far more modern port sets than you.

I know this is a small issue, but can Slashdot please update their Firefox icon? The one they are currently using has not been in use since before version 1.0 and it has undergone at least two revisions since then See this creative brief for more. You can always root out this ridiculously old icon by the lack of outlining and gloss on the globe.

Plus, I think the new one looks better, anyway. :)

Tools, Internet Options, Browsing history section's Settings button, Days to keep pages in history (set to 0 to have it not remember any).

So does that delete cookies, temporary files, search and form history and download history like Firefox does? Because then it's not even comparable.

Firefox didn't even have Private Browsing mode until 3.5 (released June 30, 2009), so saying it always had it is a bit disingenuous at best.

/facepalm. Obviously I meant at the time the feature was implemented. Do I need to specifically remind you that we're talking about IE8, too, or are you going to be okay figuring that one out by yourself?

Tools, Internet Options, Browsing history section's Settings button, Days to keep pages in history (set to 0 to have it not remember any).

So does that delete cookies, temporary files, search and form history and download history like Firefox does? Because then it's not even comparable.

Firefox didn't even have Private Browsing mode until 3.5 (released June 30, 2009), so saying it always had it is a bit disingenuous at best.

/facepalm. Obviously I meant at the time the feature was implemented. Do I need to specifically remind you that we're talking about IE8, too, or are you going to be okay figuring that one out by yourself?

You must've been using a trunk build of Firefox last time you checked, then, because Firefox has always had "Never remember history"... Where is this option on Internet Explorer? Please tell me, cause I can't find it.

Tools, Internet Options, Browsing history section's Settings button, Days to keep pages in history (set to 0 to have it not remember any).

Firefox has always had... "Permanent Private Browsing mode" so that your browser fell into private mode automatically on boot.

Firefox didn't even have Private Browsing mode until 3.5 (released June 30, 2009), so saying it always had it is a bit disingenuous at best.

You must've been using a trunk build of Firefox last time you checked, then, because Firefox has always had "Never remember history"... Where is this option on Internet Explorer? Please tell me, cause I can't find it.

Tools, Internet Options, Browsing history section's Settings button, Days to keep pages in history (set to 0 to have it not remember any).

Firefox has always had... "Permanent Private Browsing mode" so that your browser fell into private mode automatically on boot.

Firefox didn't even have Private Browsing mode until 3.5 (released June 30, 2009), so saying it always had it is a bit disingenuous at best.

Apologies, but the link I posted above did not work for some reason. Try this:

Here

I'm afraid all of this is wrong. The option to block third party cookies was renamed
HOWTO

As for the anti-phishing filter, Firefox downloads an offline blacklist from Google whereas Internet Explorer checks sites online. Whilst doing this, IE sends 'Standard computer information' (read unique ID) as well as the address of the site to Microsoft. So pretty much the opposite of what you said unfortunatley.

But plenty of other browsers are supported on those systems.

Which ones and how old are they?

Of their Windows versions:
Firefox 3.6.6 requires Windows 2000 or newer.
Chrome (all versions) requires Windows XP or newer.
Opera 10.60 requires Windows XP or newer.
Safari 5 requires Windows XP SP2 or newer.

In concert with those changes, we are also updating the eligibility language to make it clear that Mozilla reserves the right to disqualify bugs from the bounty payment if the reporter has been deemed to have acted against the best interests of our users.

Use Firefox and create multiple profiles. You will have a window for each of your Gmail accounts. http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

Having unreviewed add-ons exposed to the public, even with low visibility, has been previously identified as an attack vector for hackers. For this reason, we’re already working on implementing a new security model for addons.mozilla.org that will require all add-ons to be code-reviewed before they are discoverable in the site.

Stability problems are getting better every day. http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/08/dramatic-stability-improvements-in-firefox/

From http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2010/06/24/why-tabs-are-on-top-in-firefox-4/... "In the Firefox 4 nightly builds, and in Firefox 4 Beta 1, we are changing the default tab position so that tabs are on top. This is a preference that users can change by right clicking on any of their toolbars. Moving the default tab position is obviously a significant and to some extent controversial change to the Firefox UI, which is why we made the video above to help explain our rationale. Contributors who are active in the Mozilla community will know that this debate literally goes back for years. So in some respects this video will serve as quick summary of all of the different arguments both for an against the change. But the more interesting part isn’t about looking back, it’s about looking forward. Recently modern browsers have been transitioning to placing tops on top, and that decision isn’t arbitrary, it isn’t about fashion. The change to placing tabs on top isn’t about one browser versus another browser, it’s about the evolution of the Web as a platform."

Y'know what, I was thinking the same, because it's a widely acknowledged fact that change sucks, but this guy has convinced me otherwise.

They already did port it and it's not so great. See http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/platforms/ at the bottom. Builds of Firefox Mobile exist for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and are only intended as developer "emulators", even though they're essentially true ports.

Note: I am on the Mobile Firefox development team.

Load time is definitely an issue on Maemo. The built-in MicroB browser uses "faststart" which means that it starts a process when the device starts up, and that process stays in memory even after you close the browser. Firefox 1.1 doesn't use faststart, but we and Nokia are working on it for version 2 which will be the default MeeGo browser.

The "fennec" process running after you close the window is a bug, and one that I don't think we've seen before. If you'd like to help us solve it, you can report it here or to bugzilla.mozilla.org. Thanks!

For users of the components that crash most (Skype and UserCallWinProcCheckWow) in ways that crash them, the chance of a crash far exceed 1% since they are likely to want to use those components with Firefox repeatedly.

The installed base for the latest release is not the entire 250 million. 2.5 to 25 million would be a more reasonable estimate based on previous very deliberate and focused download Firefox campaigns which resulted in low millions of downloads in short periods.

210,000 crashes out of a population of 21-210 million runtime instances over the last two weeks, with basically a long tail distribution is conservatively a 0.1-1% chance of a crash. The long tail of the kinds of crashes indicates that whatever the source of the issue, Firefox has very poor generic exception handling capabilities such that most *classes* of possible badness have not been considered in the code design or implementation, let alone ways to gracefully recover from such badness.

The data show that Skype, UserCallWinProcCheckWow, and Firefox's own plugin handler are the top three crash instigators accounting for 10% of all crashes. This points to Firefox testers or developers not having tested well with a well-known use case (Skype), somehow using the Windows primitive incorrectly despite it being a well known and tested quantity in other applications, and a reasonable lack of understanding of how Firefox's new plugin handler may fail. Not surprisingly, Skype and UserCallWinProcCheckWow top the list of crash instigators in 3.6:
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/3.6
That Firefox developers have known about those two issues for some time (having created several bugs around them) but have made no demonstrated progress in fixing them indicates a lack of willingness or ability (or both) to adequately understand and address the underlying issues.

Together, the lack of successful efforts to fix or defend against the top few specific issues at head of the distribution, along with the lack of successful efforts to address the exceedingly long tail, indicate that Firefox development is not currently being conducted with a reflexive or sustainable process.

Far less than 0.1% of Firefox users may have encountered issues. Far less than 0.1% of Internet users are active in the free software movement. There's no logical basis to trivialize the needs or views of a user population based only on their size as a fraction of the whole unless the goal is to achieve or enforce some boring homogeneity.

It's worth noting that crash rates have been driven down significantly recently. They are indeed addressing the instabilities and tackling the problem like you demand. Pretty graphs and charts (also read the comments from Mozilla devs): http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/08/dramatic-stability-improvements-in-firefox/

202,704 crashes in the latest version in the last 14 days.

And?

Firefox's installed base is >250,000,000 users according to a quick Google search, so if those crashes are random then it means that less than 0.1% of Firefox users saw a crash in the last two weeks. More likely a large fraction of them are systematic crashes due to some crappy addon.

Either way, a 0.1% chance of a crash in two weeks is a pretty strange definition of 'unstable'.

"So I could hardly call it 'unstable'."

202,704 crashes in the latest version in the last 14 days.

Those crashes do NOT include the crashes that also crash the crash reporter. Notice that almost all the crashes were observed only in Windows. That may partly reflect the fact that Windows users are much more common.

If you get the Mozilla crash reporter check for a crash id in ~/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/submitted/ are there any crash ids?

Because it has not been released, if it was it would be where all the other betas are. ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ There would be an announcement to https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/announce-prerelease . There would be download links at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html What they are linking to is a possible build of Firefox 4 beta 1.

Stay relevant: See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the latest version, Firefox 3.6.6. Those are just the top 300. They don't include the crashes that don't invoke the crash reporter.

Often Slashdot discussions are degraded by people trying to make jokes.

Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.

Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.

We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.

Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.

The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.

Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.

There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.

Look at the current crash statistics.

See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.

It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.

Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.

Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.

Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.

We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.

Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.

The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.

Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.

There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.

Look at the current crash statistics.

See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.

It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.

Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.

Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.

Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.

We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.

Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.

The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.

Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.

There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.

Look at the current crash statistics.

See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.

It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.

Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.

Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.

Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.

We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.

Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.

The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.

Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.

There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.

Look at the current crash statistics.

See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.

It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.

Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.

That's not the link to released betas. This is:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

You'll notice FF4 isn't there. That's because the article has jumped the gun and is pointing you at a nightly instead, almost certainly not what you want.

As the weekly status meeting minutes say, the beta is coming soon and what is there right now is the nightly, for developers.

That's not the link to released betas. This is:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

You'll notice FF4 isn't there. That's because the article has jumped the gun and is pointing you at a nightly instead, almost certainly not what you want.

As the weekly status meeting minutes say, the beta is coming soon and what is there right now is the nightly, for developers.

Or how about the devs saying "the general increase is normal"
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox). or
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/626951

Firefox still slowly increases its memory footprint over time. Any other programmer would call that a leak.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

So I ran that page using Firefox 3.6.3 and it says that it passes all of the Geolocation tests, looking at the spec though it suggests that it needs to ask me before passing that info. http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html "user agents must acquire permission through a user interface, unless they have prearranged trust relationships with users" If you run that page it does not ask but if you run this page http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/ it will check with you before revieling your details.

Something like Firefox Home?

Firefox?

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history-leak/

It's been fixed in Firefox nightlies for over two months already. As far as I know, Firefox is the first browser with such a fix, but other browsers will soon adopt the same technique.

Some people think it's a virus :)

I've seen a Firefox/iGoogle setup with CoolPreview and indeed the music is audible but the game is not to be seen in iGoogle which would lead to justifiable speculation from some users.

Ditto on the OS?Browser combo here. According to page 6 of the Mozilla support ticket for this says the "cool previews" add-on is causing the only sound issue.

Here's the discussion

Pac Man.

Cheers

Do as I did a while back and set layout.css.visited_links_enabled = false in about:config.
Not knowing whether one has seen a page already sucks though. Mozilla said at some point [1,2] that it is hard to fix that issue.
I'd be happy it if CSS/JS couldn't see :visited, but the browser can set its color.

[1] http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history-leak/
[2] http://dbaron.org/mozilla/visited-privacy

They're deprecating the old API, and the new "JetPack" API isn't fully implemented yet, let alone deployed. That's a killer mistake.

NO THEY ARE NOT!

Please stop spreading this piece of FUD!

http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2010/01/11/add-ons-are-here-to-stay/

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/1.0.6.html#extensions

I knew it