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The memory improvements are nice and all, but the support for the Opus audio codec will have a much bigger impact on the Web. Opus is open source, royalty-free, and superior to previous formats in latency, flexibility, and audio quality. It handles speech, music, and general audio well, and scales fluidly from a 6kbps mono narrowband VOIP bandwidth all the way up to perceptually-transparent multichannel music. It's been approved as an IETF standard and should be published as an RFC this week.

Finally having a best-of-breed standardized codec which is universally implementable without patent royalties means that HTML5 audio - especially real-time communications - can finally take off.

Firefox is the second major end-user application to add support. (The first was the foobar2k audio player.)

more correctly called Rapid Version Number Inflation

More correctly called "Chrome does it so we have to do it too".

-- comment posted using Firefox 10.0.7ESR

Last thing I need is for an idiot in some far and distant place to think it fun to roll out a new version and trigger an update on all my computers that may render all the corporate apps unusable.

And that is why you should download and install the Firefox Extended Support Release: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html instead of their version-of-the-month.

Hopefully future ESR releases will remain able to manage updates.

You can test that in a nightly build right now. You can also follow the progress of official 64-bit Firefox on Windows.

You can test that in a nightly build right now. You can also follow the progress of official 64-bit Firefox on Windows.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

Hope they fix the running process error before going any further, it's the next most annoying thing after WinRAR's evaluation period!

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-already-running-not-responding

I don't take this as a solution:
If Firefox did not shut down normally when you last used it, Firefox might still be running in the background, even though it is not visible. Restart your computer to see if the problem goes away.

Remember the Mozilla Prism project that let you put a website in its own application?
Today Mozilla is testing the new integrated webapps on android, hop in and play with them :)
You can also test them on Nightly builds of desktop Firefox by going to a test marketplace

This happened.

Mozilla bloggery indicates that, at least on mobile platforms, WebM is just a non-starter. H.264 is already out there in hardware (all bastard patents tidily licensed, all i's dotted, all t's crossed); WebM wasn't getting any traction; and Google didn't look all that serious. (Protip, Google: if you threaten to pull H.264 support in Chrome in order to strengthen WebM's hand, you need to follow through within at least a couple of years. Otherwise, you just look like a poser chump.)

Mozilla was supporting Google's play, and Google stopped playing.

I think it boils down to "the mobile world has moved on".

as soon as this bug lands it'll be available on nightly builds, preffed off by default. The name of the about:config preference to toggle to true is:

media.plugins.enabled

as soon as this bug lands it'll be available on nightly builds, preffed off by default. The name of the about:config preference to toggle to true is:

media.plugins.enabled

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/x-forwarded-for-header/

Whoops, I'll just leave this here...

Boy should you be glad you posted that comment as AC. Anyway, http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/dnt/

What is Do Not Track?

Do Not Track is a step toward putting you in control of the way your information is collected and used online. Do Not Track is a feature in Firefox that allows you to let a website know you would like to opt-out of third-party tracking for purposes including behavioral advertising. It does this by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header every time your data is requested from the Web.

NoScript and Adblock alone won't stop people tracking you. You need to control cookies as well, and I'm not sure even that is enough. This plugin at least gives you a clue if you are being monitored

I upgraded from 13.0.1 to 14.0.1 (automatically in Ubuntu, as it was a security update, fixing many vulnerabilities). Suddenly I couldn't use right-click or drop-down menus anywhere in the browser anymore--they vanish as soon as they appear. I downgraded to 13.0.1 and it worked fine. I upgraded again, and it was broken again. Downgraded again, worked again.

Ignored by Mozilla. No choice but to use outdated versions with critical security holes.

Firefox's decline is evident, but Chrome's extension model pales in comparison. Besides, Chrome still doesn't support bookmark tags or resuming downloads!

It's time for a new community-oriented, user-focused browser--Mozilla has gone the way of corporations. But forking Firefox is not a good option--it's an enormously complex piece of software. And another problem is that every browser is a security nightmare, and requires a team of active, skilled developers to constantly fix bugs.

We're between a rock and a hard place. Computers and software are missing their potential so badly.

I actually thought this was a joke at first glance. So overall they went from white, to grayish, to grayish with some noise, to this. It's so nice working with such a consistent interface.

If only we had more observant people like you using the nightly channel and filing bugs, we might have avoided this rigamarole altogether!

Firefox Extended Support Release: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

It's probably one of your extensions causing the problem. Read more here: http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-plugs-the-add-on-leaks/

Actually, startup and memory use is the reason I don't use Chrome.

Firefox has a setting to only load tabs when you click on them, and Chrome doesn't. Because of how many tabs I keep open from session to session, Firefox is a much better choice for me at the moment.

If and when Chrome ever closes this bug, I may well jump ship too. But Firefox 15 will be out in a few weeks, and many of the memory leaks will be fixed, so we'll see. ;-)

Firefox version history.

Note that the 3.6.x lineage continues to receive updates to fix security holes and improve stability. The most recent was March 13, 2012.

The download is here.

Install it, set the appropriate update options, and enjoy.

Best of all, I have yet to encounter an extension that doesn't work with it.

The trick is to disable extension version checking.

Most extensions will work fine, even when Firefox says they won't (based on the extension target version number not matching your Firefox version).

Try the beta (FF15); it fixes most memory leaks in add-ons.

Open this image of waveforms in Firefox 13+ to see the problem.

Actually, this is fixed in Firefox 15. Go download the beta and try it out.

Open this image of waveforms in Firefox 13+ to see the problem.

Actually, this is fixed in Firefox 15. Go download the beta and try it out.

Did you know that Firefox has a LTS-esque version? More distros (debian stable and ubuntu LTS) should use this. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

This is offical policy. See Bug 374002 - Remove or rename vote support if they aren't still blocking links from slashdot.

Bad form to reply to oneself, but I forgot my favorite:

More in the stop dicking around with the UI category, we have an idiot named Carlo Alberto Ferraris to thank for destroying standalone image viewing (when you open an image file directly, or via right-click and View Image). He was so very offended by that page having a white background that he felt it necessary to ruin a feature that's been standard in browsers for over a decade.

This isn't just an issue of changing something for the sake of change, it's a plain stupid idea in the first place. First, a dark background when most websites and images are very light is jarring. Second, centering the image makes it harder to click on for actions like saving or copying. And third, it destroys the usability of a very common entire class of images.

Open this image of waveforms in Firefox 13+ to see the problem. Transparent GIFs have the same issue. The solution? Yet another addon to fix stupid Firefox developer mistakes.

Bad form to reply to oneself, but I forgot my favorite:

More in the stop dicking around with the UI category, we have an idiot named Carlo Alberto Ferraris to thank for destroying standalone image viewing (when you open an image file directly, or via right-click and View Image). He was so very offended by that page having a white background that he felt it necessary to ruin a feature that's been standard in browsers for over a decade.

This isn't just an issue of changing something for the sake of change, it's a plain stupid idea in the first place. First, a dark background when most websites and images are very light is jarring. Second, centering the image makes it harder to click on for actions like saving or copying. And third, it destroys the usability of a very common entire class of images.

Open this image of waveforms in Firefox 13+ to see the problem. Transparent GIFs have the same issue. The solution? Yet another addon to fix stupid Firefox developer mistakes.

Firefox ESR!

Most people are unaware it exists! You don't need to be running the latest stable or beta versions of Firefox and if you're tired of instability, please give Firefox ESR a try! Even The Tor Project stable releases of the Tor Browser Bundle have switched to Firefox ESR.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

"What is Mozilla Firefox ESR?

"Mozilla will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. You can read more about the plan here":

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal

Downloads for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

Who is it for?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Firefox ESR!

Most people are unaware it exists! You don't need to be running the latest stable or beta versions of Firefox and if you're tired of instability, please give Firefox ESR a try! Even The Tor Project stable releases of the Tor Browser Bundle have switched to Firefox ESR.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

"What is Mozilla Firefox ESR?

"Mozilla will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. You can read more about the plan here":

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal

Downloads for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

Who is it for?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Firefox ESR!

Most people are unaware it exists! You don't need to be running the latest stable or beta versions of Firefox and if you're tired of instability, please give Firefox ESR a try! Even The Tor Project stable releases of the Tor Browser Bundle have switched to Firefox ESR.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

"What is Mozilla Firefox ESR?

"Mozilla will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. You can read more about the plan here":

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal

Downloads for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

Who is it for?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Firefox ESR!

Most people are unaware it exists! You don't need to be running the latest stable or beta versions of Firefox and if you're tired of instability, please give Firefox ESR a try! Even The Tor Project stable releases of the Tor Browser Bundle have switched to Firefox ESR.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

"What is Mozilla Firefox ESR?

"Mozilla will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. You can read more about the plan here":

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal

Downloads for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

Who is it for?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Try running the beta for Firefox 15, or jump on the update when it comes. You're likely experiencing an extension leak. See here: http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-plugs-the-add-on-leaks/

The problem is actually that Mozilla isn't forcing their updates upon users. Someone who doesn't check it "about Firefox" box in a while easily gets 6 versions behind in no time.

Silent and forced updating like Chrome does really is the best way to keep the web moving forward without being obnoxious about it towards your users.

This hasn't been true since version 12. In that release they added an auto-updating service that runs in the background and handles installing updates without the user's permission.

I had Firefox 13 set to "Check for updates, but let me choose when to install" when version 14 was released. It bugged me a couple of times to install 14 and I said no each time. Then, one morning I open Firefox to see 14 has been installed, completely without permission. I checked the update settings and it was still set to "ask me". Looking at the update log showed that 14.0.1 had been installed as a "security update".

Few things piss me off more than software doing things I've explicitly told it not to. Firefox auto-updating wouldn't be so bad if the moronic development leads would:

• Stop dicking around with the user interface. At this point they're only changing it just to change it because they can (new toolbar buttons are just white on Aero glass? What kind of idiots are running this show again?).
• Stop dicking around with the basics. In 14 they changed the mouse-wheel scroll timing because some dev retard though it should be "smoother". The "scroll time" was doubled, making mouse scrolling like walking through freezing molasses. Thank frak there's an about:config setting for it (general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel.durationMaxMS should be ~200), or I'd have ditched Firefox same-day.
• Stop changing performance settings to satisfy memory "leak" morons. Just because a web browser is using 1GB of memory (on your 8GB system) doesn't mean it has a memory leak. It means that web pages are filled with images, and decoded images are big. Throwing away that memory every time you switch tabs means that all those images have to be re-decoded when you switch back. But what the hell -- now they can claim "OMG, Firefox 13 uses less memories than Chrome!!11!". Stupid.

Just a few of the things I hate about the new Firefox system. The ONLY reason to stick with Firefox is the addons. Mozilla is betting the entire farm against the Firefox addon ecosystem -- if (or rather, as soon as) Chrome catches up, people (including a lot of "power" users) will start leaving in droves.

Firefox has been taken over by the same kinds of people that have poisoned GNOME for years. They think dictating to users what they do and do not like and what they will and will not do is the correct way to design software. They are dead wrong, something the failure of GNOME 3 should have taught them, but just hasn't managed to sink in yet (if it ever does).

... The many good plugins.

I already know this isn't starting out well, given you've called the extensions plugins.

Hate: A single tab can hang the whole browser.

A phenomenal amount of work is going into improving this.

No convenient way to view an image with the wrong MIME type in the browser anyway.

that took 2 seconds to find

Too little and dumbed down settings.

about:config

No more status bar.

It's now the add-ons bar

Still no good debugging tools

You're right with this one. Fortunately it'll be in Firefox 15 releasing at the end of this month, play with it in the beta right now

The weird branding thing they do that caused Archlinux to not call it Firefox but various other lame names in the past (are they for open source or what?).

Trademarks have nothing to do with the code being open sourced. Users are safer because Mozilla can defend the trademarks.

No more innovation (why not try things like multiple tab groups or so

You mean like Panorama that's been there since Firefox 4? (Ctrl Shift E)

The Android version sometimes crashes and once made the whole phone reboot after a crash.

In about:crashes there are links to each crash report, perhaps you can visit irc://irc.mozilla.org/mobile and share those links to help improve it.

its slowness.

If you meant responsiveness, see my first linked answer. If you just mean javascript speed, the Ionmonkey js engine is coming along nicely.

I'm probably missing many things :)

Just one. Firefox.

... The many good plugins.

I already know this isn't starting out well, given you've called the extensions plugins.

Hate: A single tab can hang the whole browser.

A phenomenal amount of work is going into improving this.

No convenient way to view an image with the wrong MIME type in the browser anyway.

that took 2 seconds to find

Too little and dumbed down settings.

about:config

No more status bar.

It's now the add-ons bar

Still no good debugging tools

You're right with this one. Fortunately it'll be in Firefox 15 releasing at the end of this month, play with it in the beta right now

The weird branding thing they do that caused Archlinux to not call it Firefox but various other lame names in the past (are they for open source or what?).

Trademarks have nothing to do with the code being open sourced. Users are safer because Mozilla can defend the trademarks.

No more innovation (why not try things like multiple tab groups or so

You mean like Panorama that's been there since Firefox 4? (Ctrl Shift E)

The Android version sometimes crashes and once made the whole phone reboot after a crash.

In about:crashes there are links to each crash report, perhaps you can visit irc://irc.mozilla.org/mobile and share those links to help improve it.

its slowness.

If you meant responsiveness, see my first linked answer. If you just mean javascript speed, the Ionmonkey js engine is coming along nicely.

I'm probably missing many things :)

Just one. Firefox.

... The many good plugins.

I already know this isn't starting out well, given you've called the extensions plugins.

Hate: A single tab can hang the whole browser.

A phenomenal amount of work is going into improving this.

No convenient way to view an image with the wrong MIME type in the browser anyway.

that took 2 seconds to find

Too little and dumbed down settings.

about:config

No more status bar.

It's now the add-ons bar

Still no good debugging tools

You're right with this one. Fortunately it'll be in Firefox 15 releasing at the end of this month, play with it in the beta right now

The weird branding thing they do that caused Archlinux to not call it Firefox but various other lame names in the past (are they for open source or what?).

Trademarks have nothing to do with the code being open sourced. Users are safer because Mozilla can defend the trademarks.

No more innovation (why not try things like multiple tab groups or so

You mean like Panorama that's been there since Firefox 4? (Ctrl Shift E)

The Android version sometimes crashes and once made the whole phone reboot after a crash.

In about:crashes there are links to each crash report, perhaps you can visit irc://irc.mozilla.org/mobile and share those links to help improve it.

its slowness.

If you meant responsiveness, see my first linked answer. If you just mean javascript speed, the Ionmonkey js engine is coming along nicely.

I'm probably missing many things :)

Just one. Firefox.

... The many good plugins.

I already know this isn't starting out well, given you've called the extensions plugins.

Hate: A single tab can hang the whole browser.

A phenomenal amount of work is going into improving this.

No convenient way to view an image with the wrong MIME type in the browser anyway.

that took 2 seconds to find

Too little and dumbed down settings.

about:config

No more status bar.

It's now the add-ons bar

Still no good debugging tools

You're right with this one. Fortunately it'll be in Firefox 15 releasing at the end of this month, play with it in the beta right now

The weird branding thing they do that caused Archlinux to not call it Firefox but various other lame names in the past (are they for open source or what?).

Trademarks have nothing to do with the code being open sourced. Users are safer because Mozilla can defend the trademarks.

No more innovation (why not try things like multiple tab groups or so

You mean like Panorama that's been there since Firefox 4? (Ctrl Shift E)

The Android version sometimes crashes and once made the whole phone reboot after a crash.

In about:crashes there are links to each crash report, perhaps you can visit irc://irc.mozilla.org/mobile and share those links to help improve it.

its slowness.

If you meant responsiveness, see my first linked answer. If you just mean javascript speed, the Ionmonkey js engine is coming along nicely.

I'm probably missing many things :)

Just one. Firefox.

... The many good plugins.

I already know this isn't starting out well, given you've called the extensions plugins.

Hate: A single tab can hang the whole browser.

A phenomenal amount of work is going into improving this.

No convenient way to view an image with the wrong MIME type in the browser anyway.

that took 2 seconds to find

Too little and dumbed down settings.

about:config

No more status bar.

It's now the add-ons bar

Still no good debugging tools

You're right with this one. Fortunately it'll be in Firefox 15 releasing at the end of this month, play with it in the beta right now

The weird branding thing they do that caused Archlinux to not call it Firefox but various other lame names in the past (are they for open source or what?).

Trademarks have nothing to do with the code being open sourced. Users are safer because Mozilla can defend the trademarks.

No more innovation (why not try things like multiple tab groups or so

You mean like Panorama that's been there since Firefox 4? (Ctrl Shift E)

The Android version sometimes crashes and once made the whole phone reboot after a crash.

In about:crashes there are links to each crash report, perhaps you can visit irc://irc.mozilla.org/mobile and share those links to help improve it.

its slowness.

If you meant responsiveness, see my first linked answer. If you just mean javascript speed, the Ionmonkey js engine is coming along nicely.

I'm probably missing many things :)

Just one. Firefox.

We've had this discussion already. FireFox developers denied there were problems, then admitted, then introduced numerous fixes. Memshrink began June 2011 and has shown progress almost every week for over a year.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink

I left it for a while, then got irritated by Chrome's anemic script-blocking (nothing is temporary). Coming back, I haven't had any problem with memory.

Because I have script blocking, and settings are stored in a script file, it sometimes fails to restore tabs or browsing sessions if I kill it (for the sole purpose of saving tabs while I reboot or know I won't be browsing for a while). That's mostly user-error, and partly interference from a 3rd-party plugin.

The security team have already assigned the job

Even better, use Modify Headers and set your X-Forwarded-For to a US IP address (say, 12.13.14.15). You still get a direct connection that way, with latency or man-in-the-middle privacy issues.

You might already know about this and it doesn't change the reality of the GEMA, but it does fix the Youtube issue:

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/proxtube/

what about Mozilla's Persona, could it be a real alternative?

At least gives power to the users and not to the websites...

https://login.persona.org/about
http://identity.mozilla.com/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/BrowserID

Firefox has a horrible record on security.

http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html

"Critical: Vulnerability can be used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing."

Awful lot of those. Sure you can install all kinds of addons like noscript to make it a bit more secure, but Chrome requires no such thing.

Firefox being secure is just a myth. If you read slashdot these bugs are obviously never reported unlike other browsers where every single bug is trumpeted from the rooftops as the end of all computing.

My favourite example is the HTML 5 Angry Birds game.

Angry Birds Chrome is a poor example of an HTML5 game as it relies on Flash for audio. If I try it with Firefox 14.0.1, for example, without Flash installed I get a message which tells me that I either need to install Flash or use Chrome as it has Flash built-in. Better examples of HTML5 games which work without Flash are Cut the Rope, Pirates Love Daisies, World's Biggest Pac-Man, and Word Squared.

The development of the first three games was funded by Microsoft to demonstrate that credible applications can in fact be built against an HTML5 runtime. They also demonstrate that there are already high quality applications available for Firefox OS. It's pretty trivial to make them installable on Firefox OS.

My favourite example is the HTML 5 Angry Birds game.

Angry Birds Chrome is a poor example of an HTML5 game as it relies on Flash for audio. If I try it with Firefox 14.0.1, for example, without Flash installed I get a message which tells me that I either need to install Flash or use Chrome as it has Flash built-in. Better examples of HTML5 games which work without Flash are Cut the Rope, Pirates Love Daisies, World's Biggest Pac-Man, and Word Squared.

The development of the first three games was funded by Microsoft to demonstrate that credible applications can in fact be built against an HTML5 runtime. They also demonstrate that there are already high quality applications available for Firefox OS. It's pretty trivial to make them installable on Firefox OS.

You do realize that in the link that you're pointing to, Chrome is using *standard* features that are enabled through use of specialized CSS calls, right? That doesn't mean Google developed special features on their own and are trying to standardize them.

For example, here are the list of Firefox CSS calls that are standardized, but temporarily renamed, while they settle out exactly how they want to render them: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_Reference/Mozilla_Extensions

If you have Firefox/Firefox-mobile on your tablet, you can use the addon "Phony" to spoof your user-agent if you want. (Or "Modify Headers" addon for something a bit more full featured.) Chrome might have a similar addon. Opera probably already has something like that built in (it usually does).

If you're using an iPad, I can't help you.

As for google, none of my friends are over there,

G+ doesn't have friends, it has circles. So many circles...

I have an anonymous coward saying one thing, and Mozilla saying the exact same thing.

FTFY

I think I'll side with Mozilla and ignore the Asshole Coward

I don't think you actually know what the word "asshole" means. If you did, you wouldn't have called the above AC an asshole. They were not rude to you in any way, they were simply politely correcting a misunderstanding that you had. If anyone is the asshole here, it's you.

What is Boot to Gecko? Boot to Gecko (B2G) is a project with the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the Web. It is not a product offering yet, but we are working on transforming it into one.

Mozilla is explicitly saying the same thing the anonymous coward is saying.