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Speaking of lazy devs, from the linked release notes:

Known Issues

UNRESOLVED
Windows: The use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates (see 730285)

Apparently not only does something already go wrong, it can prevent your from ever being able to update Firefox again! (Without deleting your current profile, reinstalling won't work!)

But who cares, according to the calendar, it's release time NOW!

Except that, if you actually examine the bug, the problem is
a) Actually in Windows, the way System Restore works is not friendly.
b) This bug has existed since at least Firefox 3.0, probably 2.0

For those who are lazy, System Restore saves a copy of every EXE, DLL, SYS and a bunch of other file types when you create a restore point. However, the core of Firefox is actually inside a file called omni.jar , JAR is not on the Magic Microsoft List so the result of this is that System Restore saves a copy of Firefox.exe but completely ignores omni.jar so when you try to restore the previous image, you get Firefox 11.0 Firefox.exe but are stuck with Firefox 12.0 omni.jar which are not fully compatible with each other thereby breaking Firefox.

(The JAR is not a "herp derp Mozilla is dumb, naming their EXE and DLLs weird herp derp", the JAR is a ZIP full of javascript, XUL and CSS not machine code, most of Firefox's UI and stuff like session restore and so forth are written in JS instead of C++)

What exactly do you want, 25 years support and that no one else is allowed to release new features, oh, except chrome?
Let me see how hard it is... I'll google "firefox extended support release". Oh, first match:
"Where can I download Mozilla Firefox ESR?

You can download Mozilla Firefox ESR here."
*Clicks*

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

Oh.

You can download every version of Firefox we've ever released here ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ . We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

I believe since Firefox 10 plugins should break anymore:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible

Wasn't that already solved in Firefox 10 ?:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible

Wasn't that already solved in Firefox 10 ?:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible

It would have been a good idea to have started the project earlier, Firefox 4 was the biggest memory hog of all Firefox versions, but it's been going down each and every version since they started a project to fix it:

http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/

The biggest problem was a problem with JavaScript memory leaking, which was caused by the javascript engine replacement.

I just tried Firefox 12 on Mac (10.6), and when I use Cmd+N to open a new window it opens on the same monitor as the window I have focused when I use the key combination.

Same thing for window.open. The window opens on the same monitor as the page where I clicked to trigger the window.open call.

Presumably you're opening your windows in some other way. How? I'd love to fix whatever issue you're running into, but I sort of need to reproduce it first...

As far as old Firefox versions, they're all at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ (though granted, that's not terrible discoverable).

_Did_ the Firefox 11 you downloaded after editing the link fix the multi-monitor issue for you, by the way?

Actually March 2013:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

That policy was already changed in Firefox 10:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible

Reverting to ESR will actually make updates harder.

Firefox ESR gets security updates at almost the same rate that Firefox gets updates. But Firefox ESR doesn't include the fix to make updates smoother on Windows, and won't get that fix until the next ESR release in early 2013.

You can disable auto-updates, regardless of whether or not you're running the extended support version.

Preferences -> Advanced -> Update.

You can also download every version of Firefox we've ever released here. We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

How fucking useful is being able to download every version when the first thing they do is go online and update to the latest version? How many users know or care about how to turn off their Internet connection? How much fucking sense does it make to have to turn off your net connection when installing A FUCKING WEB BROWSER just so it won't override your installation decisions.

You disingenuous arrogant fucks! It takes a special kind of social ineptitude to make users who are getting what was once a good product for free HATE you and your product. You can't be a browser developer yet be so obtuse as to make a statement such as the one above without realising that it is flawed bullshit. There is a special kind of hell for you idiot Firefox devs. As a developer myself there is no way I'd have stayed on your team through the forced changes starting at version 3.0 with that fucking AWFUL bar. Your browser has quickly become more trouble than it's worth. RIP Firefox!

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

The sad thing is that you are a fucking idiot.

Then what you want is Firefox Extended Support Release or ESR which is just that, bug fixes and security updates. It will be supported until FF 17 which at the rate they are going will be about a year, maybe a year and a half.

You can disable auto-updates, regardless of whether or not you're running the extended support version.

Preferences -> Advanced -> Update.

You can also download every version of Firefox we've ever released here. We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

I switched to Chrome after giving up hope that this bug would ever be fixed. Mozilla has done nothing but point fingers at Adobe (but this bug doesn't exist in Chrome or IE with the debug Flash Player).

Speaking of lazy devs, from the linked release notes:

Known Issues

UNRESOLVED
Windows: The use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates (see 730285)

Apparently not only does something already go wrong, it can prevent your from ever being able to update Firefox again! (Without deleting your current profile, reinstalling won't work!)

But who cares, according to the calendar, it's release time NOW!

Speaking of lazy devs, from the linked release notes:

Known Issues

UNRESOLVED
Windows: The use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates (see 730285)

Apparently not only does something already go wrong, it can prevent your from ever being able to update Firefox again! (Without deleting your current profile, reinstalling won't work!)

But who cares, according to the calendar, it's release time NOW!

Now I won't have to go 10 rounds with the wife to keep the ff on her mac up to date.

Alternatively, you could just move her to Firefox Extended Support Release, which is what I did at home as soon as it was available. She'll still get the security patches, but won't get overloaded by all the pointless monthly "updates for the sake of updating".

This is exactly what the Firefox extended release is for.

Accord to their feature site, the auto-update is windows only?

Windows: Firefox is now easier to update with one less prompt (User Account Control)

So it's not really auto-update, just makes it a little nicer/easier for windows users.

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

Good, two birds with one stone...
1. People 'forgetting' to install updates and leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities.
2. People complaining about the version numbers, as the version number is now something you should only encounter when you go looking for it.

I do wonder what security issues will pop up with this background service that has some privileges to deal with the installation, rather than Chrome's method of s/appdata/programfiles/, though.

However, the 'search result gets displayed in center' is much more interesting to me from a usability viewpoint.

I'd like to take this space to thank (since I never saw a donate button) White Alice0775 - whoever that is - for writing 'Find To Center' which had largely implemented this functionality for previous FireFox releases.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-to-center/
Your addon was well and truly appreciated.

hmmmm DuckDuckGo
https://duckduckgo.com/

We can also make Google slightly less evil
https ://encrypted.google.com/search?op=out&nfpr=1&pws=0&complete=0

Bing however, lacks most url parameters, we must feed it cookies.
Cookie: _FP=EM=2;_FS=NU=1;_SS=SID=7EE6E87CC0D54A94B00A781D9BBF8197;MUID=30548A3F32BF61880EE9890E33B861D6;SRCHD=MS=2229782;SRCHUID=V=2&GUID=4C8D14618CBF44278D9CEB1BEEF6D4F7;_HOP=;_UR=OMW=0;SRCHHPGUSR=ADLT=OFF&SRCHLANG=&AS=0
My quick research so far...
I use BrowserMasquerade addon to force-feed MY cookies on Bing.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browsermasquerade

Install this on your Firefox browser. Things will look a bit creepier after that.

I'm using "TrackerBlock" and it doesn't stop it all.

Install this on your Firefox browser. Things will look a bit creepier after that.

I'm using "TrackerBlock" and it doesn't stop it all.

The best enegery saving, battery-life extneing thing I've done is to use FlashBlock. (Or in Chrome set it up to not load any extension without a click.) This has been the difference between getting 8 hours out of my laptop and getting 2 1/2.

Now if only web pages would be smarter about using setTimeout.

I suspect it's more due to third-party tracking cookies. The Collusion add-on for Firefox was mentioned on Slashdot recently. It shows very clearly how the various sites you visit are connected.

I've no idea what might be causing that particular bug, but ever since this bug (360493) was active, I've enabled/disabled saving passwords as I need them. The reason being, FF seemed far to happy to automatically insert saved usernames/passwords when really I'd have much preferred have a button that *I* have to press to do activate this. I believe that is/or was the solution in Opera using a magic-wand button? (never used Opera for anything other than browser testing).

That said... I've switched to Chrome for my day-to-day browsing now! :D

Nosquint. I use it in reverse on my 800x480 netbook.

The multiple, blocking master password prompt you refer to is the single most annoying megabug in Firefox. Here's the extension to control it: Master Password+. Since I'm using it together with Secure Login, I can actually use Firefox without screaming at it.

The multiple, blocking master password prompt you refer to is the single most annoying megabug in Firefox. Here's the extension to control it: Master Password+. Since I'm using it together with Secure Login, I can actually use Firefox without screaming at it.

"..Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click..."

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

Take a look at the NoSquint plugin.

No, I'm saying that nobody in their right minds should have Java even enabled on their computer because it fundamentally breaks the whole security model of the web browsing environment. Therefore, even as a prototype, it is unacceptable.

I would much rather have seen this implemented in JavaScript using the new HTML5 file API. It can provide the required access to local files without requiring testers to significantly increase the potential attack surface of their browsers.

His comment is akin to saying that since C and C++ has been used on viruses that get delivered as windows executables, you should not use anything written in C, C++ or windows.

No, it isn't. Not at all. If you had read the article I linked to, you would understand that the attack was only possible because of actual bugs in Java itself. Not because of code written in Java. Because of bugs in Java.

So set up an encrypted tunnel to your home machine and set it up so you can browse the web through the tunnel as if you were at home. Slower perhaps, but worth it. If they are injecting stuff, then what else are they doing? Looking at your traffic?

FireFox + QuickProxy FTW!

I use that combo when traveling. You just have to set up a machine at home to accept a ssh tunnel.

If you're using Ubuntu/Debian, you don't have to block IcedTea - per comments on their blog, it's the Debian version of IcedTea, and has been blocked in error. The IcedTea maintainer concurs. Hopefully Mozilla can re-enable it ...

I don't know why all the fuss is about breaking our version scheme so the Enterprise has a harder time planning appropriate upgrades to their work stations. And now we decided to break compatibility with your legacy Java systems. ... The enterprise doesn't stick with IE because they think it is a good browser they know how much it sucks. They stick with it because it can be maintained and managed properly in an enterprise environment.

Large/Enterprise organizations value version stability more than security? That's poor judgment. What does "maintained and managed properly" mean if it doesn't include security? It means two things: IT can cover their asses and blame problems on Microsoft, and IT can keep using vulnerable software rather then upgrading when there's security issues. Using vulnerable software is convenient for IT, but a poor solution to keeping production running.

You theorize that IE is used because it's broke but version stable. I think it's dumb inertia combined with sentiments like 'nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft' and 'you touch it, you own it', rather then a considered and reasoned decision to use IE. Your post echoes complaints about upgrades that many others have made, but they always sound like IT complaining about having to do their job, and I can tell you from experience that the upgrade cycle never ends, and the desktop issues are nothing compared to server-side systems. IT needs to get over it and fix the problem in a way that's either (relatively) long term or easy to replicate.

Finally, here are two alternatives to IE: They could use Mozilla Firefox Extended Support Release and get both security and stability. Or they could disable Java in the browser and use Java Web Start for their important Java apps.

http://www.mozilla.org/book/

You can replace flash for a couple of big sites right now with FlashVideoReplacer on mozillla. I have been using it for about a week or two now and it's not too bad.

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

Linterna Mágica is better than FlashVideoReplacer as it works with more browsers (Midori, Epiphany) and supports more websites (e.g. Dailymotion).

Josh Aas (Mozilla Corporation) 2012-03-23 11:26:00 PDT
removed Whiteboard: Revisit decision in 2015

Some of those games are not using a newer API like requestAnimationFrame. After it is more widespread, currently Firefox and Chrome, I expect some limitations will be added to setTimeout

You can replace flash for a couple of big sites right now with FlashVideoReplacer on mozillla. I have been using it for about a week or two now and it's not too bad. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashvideoreplacer/

Ok, to partly answer my own question, it seems Mozilla is not interested in adopting it.

Have you reported this bug on Bugzilla? And do you have any themes enabled? I wonder if the blue color comes from a theme or window transparency.

There you go, now convince add-on developers to covert instead of continuing to develop against the internals. The original add-on system was a hack, you can't just freeze the internals to work around that, it needs to be fixed with a proper API and the Add-on SDK is just that.

Which addons that use the Add-on SDK are breaking? Right, its not the extension API that is the problem here, it's that way back there was no extension API and add-ons hooked directly into the browser, I don't think anyone expected it to become as big as it did. So yeah, legacy add-ons need to be converted to actually use the Add-on SDK, until then Mozilla is trying to predict which internal changes are likely to break which add-ons and not many things are "artificially" broken now. But there is only so much you can do with add-ons that are as much part of the browser as not.

Exactly! It's probably written to accommodate IE and they've broken standards compliance in the process.

The Firefox hate is getting old and annoying. So, they've made a few minor mistakes recently but they've recognized that and they're adapting and doing so quite quickly.

I don't get how so many people diss Firefox after all they've done for the web and continue doing for free!. They're moving and adapting at a very fast pace and competing with companies that are over 100 times their size.

Haters, your bitching is not making any difference. If you want to make a difference, contribute or STFU!

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/

The main reason I use Firefox and not Chrome or IE is that both of them give me frequent page not responding errors. Also, its easier to talk to Firefox devs to get issues resolved if you are on Nightly. Want to find out what's happening with TinyMCE compatibility? You can start with https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=TinyMCE Find none of those fit your problem? File a new bug, and usually somebody will respond or mark it a duplicate of the bug you wanted to find in the first place.