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Firstly, doing a 'check for updates' in the old version (1.5 for OS X, I think) told me there wasn't a new one.

Then the real pain, viewing full headers is still totally broken.

So I still can't unsubscribe from a couple of (now spam dominated) Yahoo groups that I signed up to with throwaway names, as I have can't read the header to find out the throwaway name I used!

The two links below would give you a better idea about the features

Release Notes
Notable bug fixes

Here is the real list of problematic extensions. I found it when trying to figure out why my FF has become so slow that I have had to go back to IE (yes, imagine how bad it must be). My tabs just remain stuck on "Loading..." with a white page and nothing happens. And the memory usage keeps climbing. Yes even with all latest versions of everything. So I set out to minimize my add-ons to the barest that I must have.

So far I have 4 I can't live without. Adblock, IE View Lite, Firefox View, and BugmeNot. Out of these I am assuming only an "Always on" types like Adblock can cause memory + slowdown issues. The others should not hurt much right?

The blacklist has some popular extensions like Adblock, but usually its only the older versions with problems. Tab Browser Extensions and Tab Browser Preferences particularly stand out as they are not recommended.

Oh and the article is drivel.

I've found all browsers use about the same amount of memory, generally topping out at over 100 MB of RAM after a day's use. For a more reproducible browser memory benchmark, see this post: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4685 25

Memory usage of around 100 MB of using a browser for several hours is absolutely normal. That shouldn't cause any sort of problem if you have 1 GB of RAM, unless you're desperately short on memory already. I'm not denying that "the system starts to have trouble coping," but it sounds like it's not due to memory use.

the memory footprint on that thing is far, far beyond ridiculous at this point, not to mention noticibly larger than even IE7's memory requirements.

Is there something wrong with the feature? It does take more memory than if you disable the feature, but that's how it works -- by caching the DOM of recently visited pages so you can go back to them faster. If you don't like it, simply set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0.

You can help curb it by adjusting "browser.cache.memory.capacity" in about:config. It's in KB, so a value of 30000 means 30,000KB or roughly 29MB."

1. Why stop them when you can totally get rid of them: Adblock plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/186 5
2. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_ Firefox
3. Goto 1

Your suggestions are how ever already listed in the wish-list. The only problem is that the list contains probably a thousand feature requests, so I'm not sure when they will be implemented.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Feature_Brainstorm ing:User_Interface

If you want Firefox with its original advantages and just its original features, why not use the original Firefox? Meanwhile, those who can benefit from the new technology will do so.

The only reason I can think of is that the old versions have unpatched security problems, so you'll want to upgrade after they're unsupported – but if you want the Firefox developers to stop adding new features, they're not going to still fix the security problems, they'll just move to more interesting and worthwhile projects and Firefox will die. Firefox has inertia now – and the whole web is gaining inertia, after stagnating during IE6's dominance, with even the W3C restarting realistic work on HTML – so it would be a waste if it didn't continue to grow and change.

In any case, they are planning to make future versions of Firefox faster and more secure and make the code less crufty, with better C++ usage and a better garbage collector to fix memory leaks and a new JavaScript VM. And Firefox is still only a 6MB download – it's not exactly the heaviest of programs you'll ever download.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/20 07/02/threads_suck.html

Well, specifically, on Slashdot...

It was with versions prior to 1.0.1, according to this comment on the "bug" - it also provides several useful links.

There's also this complaint about the bug which has several responses on whether or not it was really Firefox's fault that users installed to "C:\" or "C:\Program Files".

The current installer behavior was in response to these reports.

Nice rant, but Firefox does not seem to use more memory than other browsers. See my above posts and the following links:
Radically New IE 7 or Updated Mozilla Firefox 2--Which Browser Is Better?
IE 7 vs IE 6
Firefox 2 - the lean, mean browser

If you can give a set of steps that causes Firefox to use "up to a gig of memory" and does not cause other browsers to use nearly as much memory, let's have it. Then whatever problem you're seeing can be reported and fixed.

Here are the references on IDN puny-code spoofing prevention settings in Mozilla. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.blacklist_ch ars http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.whitelist.* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.enableIDN http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN_show_punycod e For example. .jp Japan is whitelisted but .ie Ireland is not. There was a debate between people that wanted to disable or hobble IDN/puny-code, for security, and people who wanted to internationalize Mozilla completely. The resulting blacklist/whitelist and configurability was a compromise.

Here are the references on IDN puny-code spoofing prevention settings in Mozilla. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.blacklist_ch ars http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.whitelist.* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.enableIDN http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN_show_punycod e For example. .jp Japan is whitelisted but .ie Ireland is not. There was a debate between people that wanted to disable or hobble IDN/puny-code, for security, and people who wanted to internationalize Mozilla completely. The resulting blacklist/whitelist and configurability was a compromise.

Here are the references on IDN puny-code spoofing prevention settings in Mozilla. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.blacklist_ch ars http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.whitelist.* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.enableIDN http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN_show_punycod e For example. .jp Japan is whitelisted but .ie Ireland is not. There was a debate between people that wanted to disable or hobble IDN/puny-code, for security, and people who wanted to internationalize Mozilla completely. The resulting blacklist/whitelist and configurability was a compromise.

Here are the references on IDN puny-code spoofing prevention settings in Mozilla. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.blacklist_ch ars http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN.whitelist.* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.enableIDN http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.IDN_show_punycod e For example. .jp Japan is whitelisted but .ie Ireland is not. There was a debate between people that wanted to disable or hobble IDN/puny-code, for security, and people who wanted to internationalize Mozilla completely. The resulting blacklist/whitelist and configurability was a compromise.

I would volunteer for the job, but only long enough to find and hire and train the right person. Could I really do that? Yes, but I don't expect to be asked.

If I were the temporary head of the Mozilla Foundation, my priority would be to fix the remaining bugs.

The second quote pretty much implies you're not the right person for the job. Having a "flawless" product is not the number one priority for Mozilla, or most software producers for that matter. Why? Because by the time you're done polishing your precious baby, all you competitors will be about a decade ahead of you, feature-wise, and you'll be out of business. Firefox has its current position in the market because it was released at the right time and it had the right amount of innovations. Timing is essential it seems you can't see that.

The issue with the CPU hogging bug is this: Browsers are our windows on the world; they are VERY important. I don't accept any cynicism about the importance of browsers; it is literally true that they are important to the human efficiency. People like me who often have 10 windows with 30 tabs each really suffer when every window and tab crashes. I'm not the only one.

I agree with you regarding the importance of browsers. And I agree that these are real bugs that need to be fixed, but there are always priorities, and you're talking about a bug that occurs to a small segment of the target audience of Firefox. My guess is that a regular user has one window and less than a dozen tabs open at a time. It's no excuse for having a product that doesn't scale well, but it's still important to cater for the needs of the many, and there are much more important bugs to fix in that sense. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Mozilla, the most I've done is resolve duplicates and invalids and post one or two bugfixes)

Opera is stable and also free, but suffers from some bad design decisions. For having a look at Digg and Reddit and other common destinations, I use a separate computer and 10 installations of Opera. I like that Opera can be installed in separate folders that don't interfere with each other.

I like Opera as well, but I prefer Firefox. You can have multiple installations of Firefox in different folders, and you can also run them without interfering with each other. Again, it's something that the majority isn't interested in. I only use it for extension development.

I was surprised by this in your comment above: "You're probably just trolling, ..." You really owe it people and yourself to visit the extensive documentation to which I linked, for example, before you think that someone is trying to do harm.

That's why I used the word "probably", because I wasn't entirely sure, and I'm still not sure. Your 20 reasons post looks more like a list of disadvantages and features of a distributed bug tracking system. Bottom line is: your priorities are not necessarily Mozilla's, nor are your views. I can mention one specific bug which annoys the hell out of me and I don't understand the reasoning behind the INVALID resolution, but that doesn't make me think any less of Mozilla or their bug resolution process, it only means we have a different view on how things should work.

I think your language and persistence is what makes me wonder if you're trolling, but I'm sure you have your reasons to have a beef with Mozilla. I strongly disagree with you, that's all.

An interesting take on it from Brendan Eich:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/20 07/02/threads_suck.html

So my default answer to questions such as the one I got at last May's Ajax Experience, "When will you add threads to JavaScript?" is: "over your dead body!"

You're probably just trolling, but since you mentioned Mitchell Baker I feel compelled to call bullshit on your little rant about her. Here's a very good piece on the history of Mozilla and her involvement throughout its existence: Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox. I'll leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.

Yes, she is a woman, with no technical experience. I don't see how that makes her incapable of running the Foundation, though. It's actually an important point mentioned in the piece I linked. If you read her blog or (again) the article I linked, you'll realize that she's a woman of incredible ideas and great sense on how to run a community. Like it or not, the Firefox community sets the bar in the open source world, and that makes Mitchell Baker one of the most influential individuals in software history. Well, that's my take on it.

This doesn't help immediately, but Firefox is taking the lead in developing standards for offline web applications.

Needing to be connected to the web sucks for those who travel.

The Tamarin Project mentions Firefox 2, and as far as I can tell from reading the Firefox 2 features, it never made a new impact in the 2 release. Will this impact Firefox 3? When will it be implemented, and what exactly does it mean?

The Tamarin Project mentions Firefox 2, and as far as I can tell from reading the Firefox 2 features, it never made a new impact in the 2 release. Will this impact Firefox 3? When will it be implemented, and what exactly does it mean?

There's a fairly extensive list of extensions that work with SeaMonkey, and two people are actively working on making Firefox-only extensions compatible with SeaMonkey when their original authors are too lazy or incapable of doing so themselves. (Obviously they won't have success with all extensions - some extensions would need to be re-coded from scratch, given how crappy the original code is - but they're good with responding to requests, and have done a lot of good work already.)

It is fast, stable and uses about 1/3rd of the memory FF does.

Robert O'Callahan (a core Mozilla developer) had some fairly insightful comments on Fortress a couple of days ago I personally found interesting...

Look no further than your extensions for any performance issues like that. A poorly written add-on can effectively trash your installation and leave it a memory leaking CPU hungry beast. Take it easy with the add-ons, use well-tested ones, and keep an eye out here as a general guideline when choosing extensions.

Furthermore, since it's OSS, people are hardly being forced to include extra functionality. Don't like the direction? Fork it, or ask other people with like interests but more ability to make things happen to take it on themselves. In the end, though, I doubt the spell checker or other new features are the cause of your woes, and it's infinitely easier to track down issues with popular parts of the browser when they're officially incorporated, instead of relying on the add-on manager to assure the product will continue to keep its users happy.

P.S. -- If you find a bug because of some exotic hardware/software configuration, be a good sport and issue a bug report. In my experiences you can be a complete noob with submitting bug reports yet developers are more than willing to track down an issue. If you don't think you have enough information to post a bug report, take to the forums! People need to be more proactive in ensuring their software works for them, and one thing I love about F/OSS is the ease and transparency of that process.

Second P.S. -- Flash is often my problem. Adobe sucks.

There is actually ongoing work towards improving/cleaning up the codebase, see:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/20 06/10/mozilla_2.html

The roadmap shows mozilla 2.0 as landing for Firefox 4.0, so they are being pretty conservative.

The problem with mozilla wasn't so much that they added features, but that they added every feature that anybody wanted.

The Javascript engines in Mozilla and IE are not that bad speed-wise. The killer slowdown is the poorly implemented DOM bindings in these browsers. God help you if you have to create or manipulate thousands of DOM elements in AJAX - it can take a minute of client CPU time.

Brendan Eich's roadmap talks about this topic in his blog:
So the goals for Mozilla 2 are:

        * Clean up our APIs to be fewer, better, and "on the outside."
        * Simplify the Mozilla codebase to make it smaller, faster, and easier to approach and maintain.
        * Take advantage of standard language features and fast paths instead of XPCOM and ad hoc code.
        * Optimization including JIT compilation for JS2 with very fast DOM access and low memory costs.
        * Tool-time and runtime enforcement of important safety properties.

The Emacs command set is mnemonic as well ("mnemonic" here means that keystrokes are designed to be easy to remember). The basic Emacs commands exist on several logical levels.

There's the character level ("C-f"orward, "C-b"ackward), and line level ("C-p"revious line, "C-n"ext line, "C-e"nd of line, "C-a" beginning of line, can't use C-b you see, so might as well use the start of the alphabet). That's when you think of text as rows and columns of characters.

If you think of text as words and paragraphs, then you replace "C"ontrol with "M"eta (which is the Alt key on modern keyboards). "M-f"orward word, "M-b"ackward word, and so on, at least in fundamental mode.

If IE could simply not display incorrect HTML and CSS the code base should be far smaller, which in turn should make it easier to maintain and probably more secure.

True. Unfortunately, we've got a decade and a half worth of web pages that were built sloppily. Not all of them, but enough to be an issue, especially since many of them are effectively abandoned and don't have anyone to fix the errors. If it had been designed that way from the beginning, it would be feasible, but there's all that legacy data to deal with. Any HTML browser designed to run on the web, and not just on, say a local set of help pages, has to do something with those pages. Dave Hyatt (of Safari fame) made some interesting comments on the issue when discussing XML error handling in browsers -- basically, learning from the consequences of that decision to tolerate HTML errors without specifying how to recover from them.

Things are a bit better with CSS, as there are explicit rules for how to handle broken code (basically, ignore it and skip to the next line). The bigger problem there is handling code that was written to older, broken implementations -- the IE5 box model, for instance -- and trying to determine whether a page was built for the spec or for the broken implementation. This gets into quirks mode, and doctype sniffing, and things get kind of hairy.

(Then there's the fact that HTML and CSS are both designed with extensibility in mind... any unfamiliar tags or attributes in HTML are supposed to be ignored, so an HTML 3.2 browser can still do something useful with an HTML 4.0 page. But that's a slightly different issue.)

I have found a solution to my own question here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2641 729

They DON'T IMPLEMENT such a stupid idea.

Well, Firefox does, although it's off by default and requires a site to be whitelisted. Globally allowing silent access to the clipboard is shockingly bad, though, even if in the vast majority of cases the contents will be perfectly benign; it speaks volumes about the general attitude towards security.

clipboard.autocopy is the setting to tell you if you want highlighted text to automagically be copied instead of doing it with the mouse/keyboard.

signed.applets.codebase_principal_support Gives scripts using codebase principals access advanced scripting capabilities. Basically, it allows signed applets out of the sandbox because they've promised to play nice. One of the main uses of this (according to the help page) is to allow IRC applications access to your clipboard.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:c onfig_Entries

Don't know about the others, but firefox definitely does implement it, it's just off by default.

What I really wish existed was a screen that popped up every time you went to a new site that informed the user of the site, and asked for a cookie preference for that site. That way, all cookies could be accepted at the corporate site, and no cookies might be accepted at google.

Actually, Konqueror does that if you set it up to ask what to do when you receive a cookie. I fiddled around with Firefox and couldn't find a way to do it, but maybe messing around with Network.cookie.cookieBehavior and Network.cookie.p3p

What I really wish existed was a screen that popped up every time you went to a new site that informed the user of the site, and asked for a cookie preference for that site. That way, all cookies could be accepted at the corporate site, and no cookies might be accepted at google.

Actually, Konqueror does that if you set it up to ask what to do when you receive a cookie. I fiddled around with Firefox and couldn't find a way to do it, but maybe messing around with Network.cookie.cookieBehavior and Network.cookie.p3p

But will it pass Acid 2?

Actually, they do plan a major revamp of the Mozilla base. So major that they're going to use a tool to help automate the process.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action

Regardless of whether or not you have a profile already, going from 1.5->2.0 decides to change the default behavior in linux. Frustrating. Existing behavior should never be changed, unless the 'new way' is the only way going forward (obviously not the case for the cases I cited).

I was a relatively early adopter of Firefox, I liked it because of the multiform support, tabbed browsing, etc. I have a triple boot system, with Vista RC2, XP, and Mandriva - and Firefox 2.0 has been crashing/hanging within minutes of any browsing session, with no discrimination for the platform I am on. Needless to say, previous versions didn't have the issue. I have a psychical aversion to downgrading (I'm American, we aren't trained for that kind of thing), but I guess I will have to go back to 1.5 soon. I have also found myself using IE or opera when I am doing something that I really don't want to lose.

I'm a EE, and I know enough coding to break stuff, and piss off the CS dept., but I have no desire whatsoever to debug a browser. With that in mind, I've seen, as have the rest of you here at /., a major push to get everyone possible using FOSS. So here's my point - The community can't have it both ways with FOSS:
1: Either this type of software should only be used by those who have the ability and/or desire to fix what is or could become broken
or
2: the community, having pushed the use of FOSS into the less-technical world, should take responsibility for what they have created and promoted.

The reality right now is that the 'community' seems to want both - they want the market share - and they are very quick to run away when a product doesn't work as advertised - and don't try to say that Firefox in particular isn't advertised. Try searching for 'Firefox 2.0' crashes...Basically every response will lead you here.

Since Firefox really is the poster child of the FOSS movement, they need to be very careful not to make Microsoft's case for them.

Brendan Eich addresses most of these issues http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/20 06/10/mozilla_2.html You should know that they do intend to compete in the mobile web space. That means they have no choice but to clean everything up without the excuse "oh memory is so cheap anyway.."

Take a look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.imag e it explains how to set the Permissions.default.image to show only images from the originating site. Personally, I wish they would have left the check box for it in preferences, but editing in about:config is nearly as fast.

Firefox 2 can have Firefox 1.5 tabs - Browser.tabs.closeButtons: 3
Memory seems better in FF2 to me

And this bug is present in all versions of FF and IE...

We all know WHO publishes CSS standards and who is responsible for them.

Actually, I see people mistaking W3Schools for the W3C fairly regularly. Whether it is your intent or not, you help promote this misconception when you link the way that you do.

As for your personal issues with w3cschools, I suggest you take it up with them.

It's not just me that has a problem with them.

You don't have the Mac developers to fix-up Firefox? Do you guys even talk to the Camino team? Even if you just borrowed Keychain support from them, Firefox would be a huge improvement on the Mac.

Josh Aas is a Camino developer who has crossed over to working on Mac integration for Firefox, as well as the shared codebase used by both browsers. Not surprisingly, a lot of the interesting stuff missed Firefox 2 and is going into Firefox 3.

Parent

Someone above asked about RPMs for Fedora Core. It turns out that Fedora is skipping Firefox 2. They'll stick with the 1.5 updates for now, and upgrade to Firefox 3 when it's released.

This may prove to be a bit of a problem, though, since Firefox 1.5 is only being supported through April 2007, and Firefox 3 isn't scheduled to be released until May. Fedora Core 7 doesn't have a release schedule yet, but based on past trends it'll probably be next summer, giving them plenty of time to pull in Firefox 3.

This leaves them with a choice between jumping from Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 3 in the middle of the release, or backporting security fixes from April on to Fedora 6's EOL.

Anyone wanting to run Firefox 2 on Fedora Core will probably want to just grab the installer from Mozilla and install into /usr/local or someplace. Though if you go back to that first link, they're apparently trying to settle on a general recommendation, either by providing a separate Firefox 2 RPM or getting Firefox 2 into Fedora Extras. Either way, this will probably only help with Fedora Core 5 and 6.

Someone above asked about RPMs for Fedora Core. It turns out that Fedora is skipping Firefox 2. They'll stick with the 1.5 updates for now, and upgrade to Firefox 3 when it's released.

This may prove to be a bit of a problem, though, since Firefox 1.5 is only being supported through April 2007, and Firefox 3 isn't scheduled to be released until May. Fedora Core 7 doesn't have a release schedule yet, but based on past trends it'll probably be next summer, giving them plenty of time to pull in Firefox 3.

This leaves them with a choice between jumping from Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 3 in the middle of the release, or backporting security fixes from April on to Fedora 6's EOL.

Anyone wanting to run Firefox 2 on Fedora Core will probably want to just grab the installer from Mozilla and install into /usr/local or someplace. Though if you go back to that first link, they're apparently trying to settle on a general recommendation, either by providing a separate Firefox 2 RPM or getting Firefox 2 into Fedora Extras. Either way, this will probably only help with Fedora Core 5 and 6.