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Yes, I see what you mean now - in case anyone else is curious, here's the corresponding bug ticket.

I know Mozilla is experimenting with their Bespin project. Has anyone used it? Can it even be used to collaboratively edit yet?

* { background-image: url(telnet://some-innocent-site:80) }

There, a client and server DoS attack using only CSS. It doesn't work any more, but it did back when I found out about it (at which point it had already been known for over a year and not fixed, and stayed that way until someone else found out "shell:" urls entered in Firefox got opened and executed by IE...)

Learn to love the Firefox add-on, Autopager. No more 9 page articles, just a nicely (generally) formatted single page.

who got brave, and installed FF 3.6?

I've been running Firefox nightly builds for years. I recently switched from Windows to Kubuntu, found a 64-bit build (I think http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu), and got right back on the nightly rough edge, currently called Firefox 3.6a1pre and codenamed Namoroka.

It's definitely not for most people; you have to watch planet.mozilla.org to track what's going on, you give up on some extensions, and there are occasionally snafus where you have to look at the firefox builds forum on mozillazine to find out what's up and maybe revert to using an earlier browser for a day or so. But by and large nightly builds work. Mozilla's investment in build farms and try servers and test suites means most stuff that's checked in to the trunk is working.

Tip: use /path/to/old/firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager to simultaneously run a second instance using a blank profile to see if it's just the new version or your profile or a particular extension that's causing problems.

Sounds like bug 477564. Try the workaround in the first comment.

After reading this comment I felt the need to point out the practices of the Secunia sponsored "Full Disclosure" mailing list whose supporters I called the Full Disclosure movement.

This is the message that credits a guy called SBerry for "discovering" the vulnerability. All that guy did was take the testcase from the Mozilla bug tracker attach a payload to it and publish it as his exploit, ready to be consumed by every skript kiddie with a subscription to that list or the milw0rm exploit RSS feed.

And Secunia even have the nerve calling the exploit the original advisory.

I'm not suggesting we hide all bugs and actually I don't like Mozilla's practice of doing so, for the same reasons that you suggest.

What I'm suggesting is that people like SBerry, milw0rm and Secunia get punished for what they do. An exploit is no security advisory! As the name suggests its only purpose is to exploit a known vulnerability which in almost all cases happens with criminal intend. Secunia is promoting this practice by giving credit to the exploit writers (and who knows what else). milw0rm is one of their henchmen hosting all the exploits. SBerry is one of the many misguided hackers, yearning for approval, who partake in this "security practice" called Full Disclosure.

But you know, I'm just a developer who was raised a hacker. I would never call me a security expert but I really have an uneasy feeling knowing that the Security industry is promoting ready-made exploits, which I think is actually quite insecure.

litmus
mozilla qa
Both seams simple but time consuming but i don't think they need to be done in one sitting (unless you are on the nighties), unfortunately Linux x86_64 only has nighties.

p.s does anybody know a good way to update firefox (mozilla builds) as launching it as root isn't great and the idea of installing a webbrowser somewhere it can update itself is retarded.

litmus
mozilla qa
Both seams simple but time consuming but i don't think they need to be done in one sitting (unless you are on the nighties), unfortunately Linux x86_64 only has nighties.

p.s does anybody know a good way to update firefox (mozilla builds) as launching it as root isn't great and the idea of installing a webbrowser somewhere it can update itself is retarded.

OS dependent. They coded for the case where Windows CE/2000 did not have a certain call and they wanted to get good entropy for their RNG in NSS. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605

Here, let me click on the top link for "firefox build instructions" in google: simple firefox build. Looks pretty standard to me. Tests, if there are any, are usually automated or findable by a similar exercise.

323 // 0: no restrictions - divert everything
324 // 1: don't divert window.open at all
325 // 2: don't divert window.open with features
326 pref("browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction", 2);

See http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/94909af358c4/browser/app/profile/firefox.js

I think the problem that you may be facing is due to firefox doing weird things to generate random numbers at start
See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605
I see that the bug has since been fixed - but I guess it has not been distributed to the general public via upgrades.

And how are readers to know that your link is any more valid than mine?

Actually, the safest way to link to extensions would be through Mozilla's Own Site. That page should have the actual category.

According to the mozilla wiki report of the weekly status meetings the patch will be out by the end of the week: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3.5/StatusMeetings/2009-07-15

I was going to point out that NoScript was near the top of the recommended add-ons page, but now I see that is no longer there at all! You have to search for it. Adblock Plus still tops the list, however.

Or 'ftp ftp.mozilla.org'. As I recall, Windows Explorer includes an FTP client, so you should just be able to put ftp://ftp.mozilla.org into the address bar and grab it (you can do this with the finder in OS X too).

It's already patched, and there are test builds of Firefox 3.5.1 available.

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Sometimes

Mozilla has confirmed the first security vulnerability in Firefox 3.5, saying that the bug could be used to hijack a machine running the company's newest browser.

Just a note, I think Mozilla tries to shirk any idea of "company" or "corporation" from the open source development side of things. Instead, they are a non-profit foundation and recently created a separate taxable corporation with the intent of distribution and productizing Firefox & Thunderbird.

I think the word 'company' implies commercial interests and the developing part of Mozilla--the Foundation--does not have any commercial interests. While this may seem unimportant to you, I believe it to be a pretty important concept to clarify when you're talking about open source from a non-profit and open source from a company.

Mozilla has confirmed the first security vulnerability in Firefox 3.5, saying that the bug could be used to hijack a machine running the company's newest browser.

Just a note, I think Mozilla tries to shirk any idea of "company" or "corporation" from the open source development side of things. Instead, they are a non-profit foundation and recently created a separate taxable corporation with the intent of distribution and productizing Firefox & Thunderbird.

I think the word 'company' implies commercial interests and the developing part of Mozilla--the Foundation--does not have any commercial interests. While this may seem unimportant to you, I believe it to be a pretty important concept to clarify when you're talking about open source from a non-profit and open source from a company.

Good idea. You can even use an existing add-on, Greasemonkey to do this.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

I recommend User Agent Switcher for Firefox. Quick and easy way of faking your UA string from inside the browser.

The only thing it's missing is allowing you to specify an UA to be selected automatically for a certain site, so you have to do it manually. Not a big deal for me.

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Som

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Som

Likewise, but I also sync calendar using Lightning for Thunderbird with "Google Contacts" add-on and sync contacts (with gmai set up for this purpose) using "Provider for Google Calendar" add-on. On the Blackberry, like you, it is Google sync which syncs both the calendar and contacts.

Works well and glad I could finally ditch Outlook at work. We don't use Exchange.

Add-on links:
Provider for Google calendar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631
Google Contacts: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/7307

Likewise, but I also sync calendar using Lightning for Thunderbird with "Google Contacts" add-on and sync contacts (with gmai set up for this purpose) using "Provider for Google Calendar" add-on. On the Blackberry, like you, it is Google sync which syncs both the calendar and contacts.

Works well and glad I could finally ditch Outlook at work. We don't use Exchange.

Add-on links:
Provider for Google calendar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631
Google Contacts: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/7307

on one page instead of 12

The Firefox Add-on AutoPager is your friend: automatically loads the next page inline as you scroll downwards. Turns multi-page sites into the single page they are supposed to be. Works great with many popular pages, including search results... and idiotic news sites.

You don't seem to grasp the issue here. Say there is a bug in DirectX where if you send a certain pixel shader program to it there is a buffer overflow allowing execution of arbitrary x86 code. Keep in mind that DirectX cannot run inside the sandbox because in order to render anything with the GPU it has to access the video driver. The same sort of thing goes for the display driver itself too.

This sort of thing has happened before. Flaws in the sandboxes of Firefox and Internet Explorer have allowed Javascript to access the filesystem by breaking out of the sandbox:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-214620.html

http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2005/mfsa2005-41.html

That isn't even mentioning XSS vulnerabilities, the most common kind these days.

Really? I've been using FlashBlock on my older PPC macs, given that I rarely encounter a flash widget that *doesn't* cause CPU usage to spike to 100%.

I could understand the lack of HD support if VLC and QuickTime weren't able to handle 780p video without utilizing the entire CPU. VLC can play a youtube flash video, while keeping utilization at around 20% -- the real Flash Player almost always takes up 100%.

I understand that Flash's performance woes are by no means restricted to PPC Macs, although PCs of the same vintage have always seemed to perform considerably better while playing flash videos.

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Sometimes

Throw this in and the jokes write themselves.

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Sometimes Bugzilla rep

I have to say that Firefox is getting a lot worse lately. The user experience is in serious need of improvement and development is the pits. I installed the latest "big deal" Firefox update on June 30th. (For some reason they skipped a full four secondary updates, but whatever.) Upon restarting, which took several minutes, I began using Firefox 3.5.

At first, Firefox seemed strangely familiar. I thought they had changed very little unnecessarily until I visited the Acid3 test. Lo and behold, I was still using Firefox 3.0.0.11. What the fuck? I manually invoked Check for Updates and repeated my first attempt only to find, upon restarting, the same thing.

Finally in desperation I downloaded the installer manually from Mozilla. The install ran surprisingly quickly and, after a few minutes, I was launched with the new version. I had to check, though, because again I thought it looked like very little had changed.

In fact, did Mozilla bother changing anything beside the JavaScript? The new TraceMonkey is great and all, but they could have at least made it look like they were working on something else. When the most noticeable improvement is the "Know Your Rights" button (which everyone ignores) one really starts to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Well, after the three tries it took to upgrade, I found my profile wouldn't migrate. This was a mess, but I was able to eventually retrieve my bookmarks from a long, arcane file path in a hidden directory. But then upon visiting my bookmarked sites I found that almost none of my add-ons are compatible with it. Therefore my browser is almost entirely functionless.

The bookmark tool itself could use a polishing. It's a mess and has been since version 1.0. If a browser is meant to render and organize content, Firefox surely falls down in this area. Why does it take me several minutes to slosh through the GUI just to make a new folder and alphabetize some bookmarks in it? Not to mention the damned Bookmarks toolbar, which takes up too much damn space and can't be turned off.

And speaking of the GUI, it's slow as Hell slowget rid of the proprietary XUL and just hardcode the damned interface already!

I also have to mention memory use. On my system, Firefox was swallowing an incredible 400 MB with only a simple HTML 4 table open. 400 MB?! I blame this on the Firefox team's use of C++, where memory management is about as easy as herding cats. Likewise Firefox is a slow, bloated nightmare. (For a contrast, there's Safari, which is written in Objective C and is very small and efficient.)

Most of the time I have heavy JavaScript sites open. I shudder to think how much Firefox eats then, and I'll be sure to check in the future. No wonder my system tends to slow down when I've left Firefox open for days on end with dynamically updating pages and RSS feeds. Clearly, Firefox leaks memory like a cracked sieve in a waterfall.

With Firefox smelling more and more like crapware, I started to dig a little, first on Wikipedia and then on the Mozilla Development Forums. It turns out that my observations are part of a larger pattern of Firefox quality issues and development customs. The Mozilla developers are a bunch of arrogant, abusive shitheads.

For starters, they're still running all tabs in the same process. This is something IE7 and Safari 3 have had right for years. So if a plugin crashes or a page takes forever to finish rendering, everything's stuck. You can't even switch tabs to another page! And Firefox 3.5 is a "milestone" release? Firefox 3.6 and 4 are milestones too, and process-per-tab isn't scheduled for either.

Developer interaction with Firefox users is stilted too. Sometimes Bugzilla rep

"every variable is global" in JS

Bzzzzzzzzzzt -- wrong.

Scoping rules in JavaScript are very simple: Global variables are global, local variables are local.

Can Visual Studio do "extract to local variable" and "extract to method"?

Maybe a Google search for... I dunno... "Visual Studio extract method" would produce an informative result.

I use the mouse to:

• 
     
• select text (usually if it's a good bit away from the present cursor location or would take a couple moments to get right with the keyboard)
     
• move the cursor (usually if it's a good bit away from the present cursor location)
     
• scrolling (sometimes with code; more commonly for web pages and email)

•    

• to click on links in the web browser when I'm looking up documentation (usually)

•    

• sometimes to move windows around (at least on Windows; on Linux I use a tiling window manager)

•    

• sometimes to open files (if I have an explorer/similar window open)

•    

• usually to operate CVS (Tortoise makes many operations much easier, like committing most but not all of your changed files; with command line CVS, you have to type in every file that is changed, while with Tortoise you simply uncheck those you don't want to commit)

•    

• invoke many infrequently-used commands

I would take some offense if someone labeled me a n00b who just hasn't discovered the wonders of keyboards; I'm reasonably efficient with Emacs (and use the mouse for some cursor navigation but rarely more), I've got the LOL extension for Firefox installed so when I don't feel like using a mouse I can still click on links, and I use a tiling window manager (and am considering trying a Windows port of dwm)! I have no doubt that people can use the computer very efficiently with a mouse, but to think that a mouse has little place at a programmer's desk is, I think, just stupid.

Not only that, but OpenDNS will even hijack Firefox's Google keyword searches! I don't trust that company one bit. I use my laptop in a lot of different places (friends, relatives), so I've given up on the whole DNS whack-a-mole and have begun using NoRedirect instead.

I use my laptop in different networks (visiting friends, relatives, etc.), and opt-out is often not easy or not even possible (depending on which ISP it is). So now I just use NoRedirect and never have to worry about this stuff again.

That's why I use the NoRedirect extension these days. Don't have to bother with the draconian (and often non-existent) opt-out policies, no matter whose network I'm using.

The idea is/was to do a large scale cleanup and refactoring.

And it's getting done in pieces. Mozilla developers wrote a string of tools (Elsa, Oink, TreeHydra, DeHydra) to analyze the codebase, all open source and some contributing to GCC's rearchitecture to better support plug-ins Developers can then pick specific cleanups and refactoring and identify exactly what code is affected and even do rewrites, though these go through code review. This happens steadily.

... But the smaller, leaner, more approachable codebase goal?.

DeCOMtamination proceeds. In each release a few major internal rewrites get in, like the switch to thebes on Cairo and the HTML reflow changes; upcoming is Combined nsImage* & gfxImageFrame and the HTML5 parser.

... Makes you wonder if there's anyone at the wheel.

There's no need to wonder when all the development takes place in the open. Pay attention or don't style yourself as an armchair expert.

The idea is/was to do a large scale cleanup and refactoring.

And it's getting done in pieces. Mozilla developers wrote a string of tools (Elsa, Oink, TreeHydra, DeHydra) to analyze the codebase, all open source and some contributing to GCC's rearchitecture to better support plug-ins Developers can then pick specific cleanups and refactoring and identify exactly what code is affected and even do rewrites, though these go through code review. This happens steadily.

... But the smaller, leaner, more approachable codebase goal?.

DeCOMtamination proceeds. In each release a few major internal rewrites get in, like the switch to thebes on Cairo and the HTML reflow changes; upcoming is Combined nsImage* & gfxImageFrame and the HTML5 parser.

... Makes you wonder if there's anyone at the wheel.

There's no need to wonder when all the development takes place in the open. Pay attention or don't style yourself as an armchair expert.

Opposition to threading by Firefox devs came from, among others, Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript. You can read his well supported arguments on Bugzilla.

BE's opposition was based on solving the problem, if there is one, rather than re-architecting the solution on principal.

...If you insist on defining the problem to dictate the
solution, then of course "multitasking" is the OS's job.

But responsive browser UI with windows and tabs galore is not "multitasking". I
dissent. Many browsers are responsive (modulo plugins, separate issue, dealt
with via processes in Konq, e.g.) without threads.

I really do object to putting the thread cart before the various horses (lack
of UI responsiveness, lack of CPU utilization on multicores, other throughput
and latency complaints) whose best solutions *may or may not* have anything to
do with threads.

His position is against the original bug reporter:

There would be substantial improvement in the quality of the UI if the general
UI and the geck UI (as in web pages) were threaded. This would also protecta
against locked pages.

Essentially, his objection was that it wasn't solving the problem. This is a different argument - more like whether Google Chrome has a good idea with their protected processes. That's a problem with stability - If the browser handled ALL exceptions intelligently, and watched for runaway scripts, it wouldn't be needed at all.

IE 7's tabs are isolated, and the dev team said they had to jump through hoops to get it to work correctly - adding more complexity, which means more potential points of failure. From the same bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40848#c11

"One design decision worth calling out is that our current implementation is
fully multithreaded. Each tab is on a separate thread, and the frame is also on
its own thread. This has some impact on the overall footprint of IE, but we
believe this will allow IE7 to feel faster and provide an overall better user
experience. Internally this creates some additional complexity as we have to
deal with a lot of cross-thread communication, but it also gives us a way to do
things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do with a single-threaded approach."

I'm all for deciding what the problem is and finding a solution to fix it - not proposing a new design just to see if we can.

Profile data cannot be shared by multiple running instances.

Not sure, but I do know that they've been removing XPCOM where they can throughout the Gecko / Firefox codebase.

Funny thing is, they're already in the middle of a major revision project. After Fx2, Brendan Eich released a set of goals for Mozilla 2. The idea is/was to do a large scale cleanup and refactoring (explicitly not a rewrite, however) in order to get rid of some legacy code still around from overly ambitious plans that didn't pan out (e.g. XPCOM). That was to happen in parallel to the development of Fx3 on Gecko 1.9.0.

It's not clear how much progress has been made on Gecko 2.0—almost no public-facing announcements are made about it to the community, and the wiki page is dormant. All the work and focus seems to have been poured into Gecko 1.9.1 (Fx3.5) and now 1.9.2 (Firefox.next).

One element of Eich's vision for Mozilla 2 was implemented in 3.5 – the new faster javascript implementation. But the smaller, leaner, more approachable codebase goal? Who knows.

Now it seems they're attempting 'Electrolysis' (the codename for process separation) in parallel to the development of Firefox.next (Gecko 1.9.2), which is already ostensibly being done in parallel to the Mozilla 2 refactoring. Makes you wonder if there's anyone at the wheel.

Here's an essay I wrote about Mozilla's direction back in 2007 when Mozilla 2 was supposed to kick off.

Funny thing is, they're already in the middle of a major revision project. After Fx2, Brendan Eich released a set of goals for Mozilla 2. The idea is/was to do a large scale cleanup and refactoring (explicitly not a rewrite, however) in order to get rid of some legacy code still around from overly ambitious plans that didn't pan out (e.g. XPCOM). That was to happen in parallel to the development of Fx3 on Gecko 1.9.0.

It's not clear how much progress has been made on Gecko 2.0—almost no public-facing announcements are made about it to the community, and the wiki page is dormant. All the work and focus seems to have been poured into Gecko 1.9.1 (Fx3.5) and now 1.9.2 (Firefox.next).

One element of Eich's vision for Mozilla 2 was implemented in 3.5 – the new faster javascript implementation. But the smaller, leaner, more approachable codebase goal? Who knows.

Now it seems they're attempting 'Electrolysis' (the codename for process separation) in parallel to the development of Firefox.next (Gecko 1.9.2), which is already ostensibly being done in parallel to the Mozilla 2 refactoring. Makes you wonder if there's anyone at the wheel.

Here's an essay I wrote about Mozilla's direction back in 2007 when Mozilla 2 was supposed to kick off.

Threading for Javascript? Not possible! Stop asking for something that can't be done! The Firefox devs cried!

Opposition to threading by Firefox devs came from, among others, Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript. You can read his well supported arguments on Bugzilla.

That doesn't excuse Firefox devs from not supporting a parallel architecture earlier, from which users would significantly benefit. But the conversation on that link is an oculus into the reasoning behind not having a parallel architecture earlier.

You could use IETab for the sites that still need Internet Explorer. It can be set up so that the tab automatically uses IE for certain websites. The other sites will use FireFox as normal and users won't need to worry about firing up a second web browser. Then, if you update a web application so that it doesn't require IE6, you can remove that site from IETab's list. Users won't need to change their habits at all, but will get the FireFox rendering engine.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/