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There's more involved with a release than just uploading a few binaries; and it's how every milestone release has been handled. Unfortunately everyone is too eager to get credit for being the first to release the news - what reader is going to thank a news site for waiting an entire day to respect the wishes of the developers and ensure a smooth launch, when another site is already throwing around links to FTP downloads?

Install this.

The default theme for FF 2.0 makes me want to scrape my eyes out. The default theme for 1.0/1.5 was bad, but it's gone from bad to actively offensive, in my opinion.

My eyes returned to happy land as soon as I got Qute for FF 2.0 installed.

Just setting extensions.checkCompatibility to false and will allow you to install new incompatible extensions too. I've already done it (on RC3, but hey, I doubt that'd change now), and the Knowledge Base says the same.

I forget the exact quote asa dotzler but dont believe what media/news outlets say until we get the official word from the official people.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2006/1 0/i_said_tuesday.html

See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/preed/2006/10/the_a ntirelease.html for the Mozilla build team's take on articles like this one.

I hope they fixed the memory leak.

(For some fun, I recommend posting above message to the mozillazine-forum. They always like constructive critizism, ensuring fun for both sides.

One of the stated purposes of IE7 was to better support the W3C standards, and (presumably) to increase compatibility among W3C-compliant browsers. Yet despite multiple requests for DOM 2 Events support, the IE team decided to overlook this support. Currently, IE is the only major browser lacking DOM Events support. Which is a major issue, as IE's attachEvent() design means that special code must be written for IE compatibility.

As someone who's been forced into using runtime patches (example) to increase IE's compatibility with DHTML code, I feel compelled to ask: Why has the IE team ignored this critical standard?

When has Mozilla claimed that in innovated tabbed-windows interface? You are quoting Seattle Post-Intelligencer, not Mozilla.

ahem
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.cap acity

Firefox also lets you decide how much memory is used for caching. The problem is that all images on all currently displayed pages are stored uncompressed in the memory cache, even if the storage exceeds the maximum size you've set. It's not a memory leak, so in practice the memory usage is a problem only when you're displaying pages with lots of large images, but it can cause hundreds of megabytes of memory usage on certain pages.

Good news... There are several reports that Firefox 2 uses less memory than IE 7. Only a small percentage of users ever had problems with memory usage to begin with.

Reducing memory usage in Firefox:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_ Firefox

Yes there is. You can remove the close buttons from the tabs (make it look like it was in 1.5) and also tell the min width for the tabs:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

Yes there is. You can remove the close buttons from the tabs (make it look like it was in 1.5) and also tell the min width for the tabs:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

It was first introduced in NetCaptor browser, more history here.

Are we done with this memory issue crap? The vast, vast, VAST majority of memory issues with Firefox were and are extension related. I've been running it since the 0.8 Phoenix days and have never had any problem with memory issues. This includes my now 1G of ram Windows 2000 system I run at home. Want to see how the current RC version compares in memory usage to IE7 and Opera, try this: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4685 25

Note the huge discrepancy between memory usage.

Slow and balky? You're obviously a troll because from day one Firefox has always been faster than IE on every page I visit, including Microsoft's own site, regardless of what OS I'm using. On average, Firefox is 1-2 seconds faster loading a page than IE. In some cases the page loading times are nearly five seconds faster using Firefox.

You're free to use whatever browser you want, no matter how insecure its, but stop throwing FUD out. It only makes you look stupid.

...and 1% of the memory leaks!

Yes!

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

Specifically, look at:
browser.tabs.closeButtons
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

In order to do a comparison benchmark, shouldn't you be... you know, comparing against something?

That's basically what the browser memory benchmark does. When I run the test, Firefox 2 uses significantly less memory than IE 7, similar to the posted results in the forum thread I linked to.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4736 82

Please voice your concern about memory at Mozilla.

[...] Does anybody know if development efforts for Firefox 2 have included memory management? I can't seem to find any record of that online.

Maybe this MozillaZine Knowledge Base article about memory problems in Firefox holds the answer:

Memory leaks can cause Firefox not to release memory that it is no longer using, especially with older versions. There has been a lot of effort to reduce the leaks in recent versions, and Mozilla developers have have created tools to detect them. [4] [5] To minimize leaks, you should upgrade to the most recent version. The most common memory leaks appear to be fixed in Firefox 2. [6]

[...] Does anybody know if development efforts for Firefox 2 have included memory management? I can't seem to find any record of that online.

Maybe this MozillaZine Knowledge Base article about memory problems in Firefox holds the answer:

Memory leaks can cause Firefox not to release memory that it is no longer using, especially with older versions. There has been a lot of effort to reduce the leaks in recent versions, and Mozilla developers have have created tools to detect them. [4] [5] To minimize leaks, you should upgrade to the most recent version. The most common memory leaks appear to be fixed in Firefox 2. [6]

Whenever I close tabs, I see the memory freed up. If you really want to, you can completely turn off the bfcache feature.

Dozens of memory leaks have been fixed in Firefox 2. A memory benchmark shows Firefox 2 consumes less memory than IE 7 or Opera 9.

If you're still seeing a memory problem in Firefox 2, what you should do is describe steps to reproduce the problem so the bug can be reported and fixed.

• Large Amount of Memory Issues Fixed.

Hrm. I'll try it out and see how effective it is.

BTW, I found a better URL for documentation on that pref:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwin dow.restriction

Full SVG support, integrated and sorted (should have been done before)

"Full SVG" doesn't make it entirely clear what you want, given the different versions and profiles. Most web browser developers seem to dislike the recent SVG Tiny 1.2, because its design is unsuitable for the web. Mozilla already has bloat problems with their SVG implementation (partly their fault, partly because the spec is large and complex), and some developers want a simpler SVG because most people don't actually need SVG - they just want proper scalable images in web pages. (The same applies for wanting animated PNGs, but not needing MNG). None of that is an excuse for bugs or missing features in what they've already decided to try to implement, though.

Whole page zoom seems to be an area where Firefox is falling behind at the moment - as far as I can see, the plan is to do that for Firefox 3 (which has a new graphics system) some time next year. I believe that new graphics system will let them do nicer image resizing too.

Thunderbird has the option of allowing images from those in your personal address book.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Privacy_basics_(Thunderb ird)
says that its the default setting.

How about the official unofficial builds?

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=42

Not to mention that I've asked the Firefox dev team personally in regards to CVS builds, Gentoo patches, and the like. We're not supposed to use the official logo, and we just have to make it clear that it is an unofficial build. That is the word from the devs themselves.

Which Google plugin -- the official Google Toolbar? Do David Baron and Google know about the problem?

I do see something about the Google Toolbar listed on the problematic extensions page but not on Hendikins' Firefox memory usage FQA. Hmm.

I'm heavy Eudora user and have over a decade of archived mailboxes. It has always used the unix-mail style text format for mailboxes, with attachments saved separately. (I guess we all know Outlook stores everything in one horrible PST file.)

But... Eudora had terrible problems corrupting mailboxes all through the late 1990's and early 2000's. They finally got it fixed about four years ago. I'd search for an email I knew was there, I could grep it, but it was gone from the message list. Looking at the text file, I'd see the delimiting blank line between messages got crushed. It took them a long time to fix that. Handling nonprintable characters and line endings correctly seems to have been the problem. I think they even let ASCII 26 (x1A) into the files, which acts as an EOF in many Windows/DOS text formats.

As for MIME/HTML, at least in Windows, Eudora handles it two ways. You can choose to use "Microsoft's Viewer" (default) or Eudora's rendering, which has had bugs but now seems stable.

Overall, Eudora has not been as perfect as described here, but much better and safer than Outlook. And right now, it is stable. The almost-current 7.0.1.0 version lasted over a year, I believe. In any case, the release schedule has been slow lately.

You can read about "Eudora Rescue" here:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Issues_:_I mport_From_Eudora#Importing_Eudora_Mail_with_Eudor a_Rescue
and here:
http://qwerky.50webs.com/eudorarescue/
I haven't used it since I didn't hear about it until after I stopped seeing ASCII 26's, etc.

For those complaining about firefox's memory footprint, I suggest you read this. In general firefox will use more RAM only if you have more RAM available; you WANT more of your memory to be used for caching to speed things up (as long as it doesn't result in swapping). That said, there are a few real bugs in plugins, and probably the main codebase too. They are hopefully being worked on. By the way, here are my referer browser stats for October so far, for anyone interested.

FYI, the tri-licensing issue is bug #330295 and is fixed in Firefox's trunk and whatever branch Firefox 2.0 is being built from.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/ 03/relicensing_complete.html

http://kb.mozillazine.org/SSL_is_disabled

It appears that the more common leaks are fixed in Firefox 2.

to revert back to 1.x style x (where there was only one x on the right hand side) 1. go to about:config in the address bar 2. find Browser.tabs.closeButtons 3. set the value to 3 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s

Blame it on conflicting usability studies -- or maybe conflicting usability goals.

Close buttons on the tabs are good from a discoverability standpoint.
A close button on the end is good from a clicking-in-the-right-place standpoint.

Firefox has traditionally given discoverability a high priority.

'cos if so your internet tracks will not be erased.

I hope someone here is intelligent enough to come up with a sensible alternative or fix which does not involve installing Linux or another OS.

here is the issue, is it a problem?

You can easily find instances of Opera using more memory than that: 1, 2, 3, 4.

You can easily find instances of Opera using more memory than that: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Does Windows Media Player still leave traces in Internet Explorers' History?

I say this because I discovered the default WMP plugin for Firefox (identified on installation) leaves traces in Internet Explorers history and cache.

Clearing firefoxes cache does not remove this...

I realise its not an IE problem specifically and its not a Firefox problem, but its something that surprised me...

see here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4725 58

I remember good old MozillaQuest, but you sholdnt have put a link to it otherwise google may give it a better page rank than it deserves.

Its quite funny to think the history of the site, it actually started off as pro-mozilla containing a number of articles about using xul and other mozilla technologies, it even had some of his articles listed on the pro-mozilla blog mozillazine, then after a while he became very critical about the whole mozilla process featuring bug counts and every article was a cut and paste of the previous one but witht the bug counts updated.

Then when Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox started to become popular then the site started to drift away from mozilla coverage (perhaps he liked firefox and decided he just didn't want to bother writing about it again). Now the site is more of a Linux review site, openly critical of US government policies (which everyone should be - it doesn't make you unpatriotic to question your government you know - saying you're either with us or with the terrorists is just crap).

Anyway, your right mozilalquest did pioneer the use of bug counts to make something look bad, despite the fact that manyt people refuted these comments mozillaquests arguments seem to now be used by other sources that should know a whole lot betters.

^^(Shit, wrong formatting!)

My Firefox on WinXP has been open about 8 hours and is using only 129 MB so far. I have 16 extensions loaded right now.

Generated: Sat Oct 07 2006 00:57:46 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061004 BonEcho/2.0
Build ID: 2006100403

Enabled Extensions: [16]
- All-in-One Sidebar 0.7 RC 4: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/
- ChatZilla 0.9.75: http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/
- CoLT 2.2.1: http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/
- Console 0.3.6: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3181 02
- DOM Inspector 1.8.1: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/
- FoxyTunes 2.0.2.1: http://www.foxytunes.com/
- Gmail Manager 0.5.3: http://www.longfocus.com/firefox/gmanager/
- Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
- MR Tech Local Install 5.3: http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/
- Saved From URL 1.2: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bon%20Echo%20Saved% 20From%20URL
- Stylish 0.4: http://userstyles.org/stylish/
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001: http://tmp.garyr.net/
- Talkback 2.0: http://talkback.mozilla.org/
- Update Channel Selector 1.0.1: http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/u pdatechannel/index.html
- userChrome.js 0.7: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3977 35
- XPather 1.0.1: http://xpath.alephzarro.com/

Disabled Extensions: [1]
- Free Download Manager plugin 1.0: http://freedownloadmanager.org/

Total Extensions: 17

Installed Themes: [3]
- Firefox (default): http://www.mozilla.org/
- Halloween 1.9.5: http://edhume.googlepages.com/home
- QuBranch 1.0.20060929: http://www.schrade.com/firefox/themes/

Installed Plugins: (10)
- Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 8
- Microsoft® DRM
- Mozilla Default Plug-in
- OpenOffice.org Plug-in
- QuickTime Plug-in 7.1
- RealPlayer Version Plugin
- RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
- Shockwave Flash
- Shockwave for Director
- Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

^^(Shit, wrong formatting!)

My Firefox on WinXP has been open about 8 hours and is using only 129 MB so far. I have 16 extensions loaded right now.

Generated: Sat Oct 07 2006 00:57:46 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061004 BonEcho/2.0
Build ID: 2006100403

Enabled Extensions: [16]
- All-in-One Sidebar 0.7 RC 4: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/
- ChatZilla 0.9.75: http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/
- CoLT 2.2.1: http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/
- Console 0.3.6: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3181 02
- DOM Inspector 1.8.1: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/
- FoxyTunes 2.0.2.1: http://www.foxytunes.com/
- Gmail Manager 0.5.3: http://www.longfocus.com/firefox/gmanager/
- Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
- MR Tech Local Install 5.3: http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/
- Saved From URL 1.2: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bon%20Echo%20Saved% 20From%20URL
- Stylish 0.4: http://userstyles.org/stylish/
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001: http://tmp.garyr.net/
- Talkback 2.0: http://talkback.mozilla.org/
- Update Channel Selector 1.0.1: http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/u pdatechannel/index.html
- userChrome.js 0.7: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3977 35
- XPather 1.0.1: http://xpath.alephzarro.com/

Disabled Extensions: [1]
- Free Download Manager plugin 1.0: http://freedownloadmanager.org/

Total Extensions: 17

Installed Themes: [3]
- Firefox (default): http://www.mozilla.org/
- Halloween 1.9.5: http://edhume.googlepages.com/home
- QuBranch 1.0.20060929: http://www.schrade.com/firefox/themes/

Installed Plugins: (10)
- Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 8
- Microsoft® DRM
- Mozilla Default Plug-in
- OpenOffice.org Plug-in
- QuickTime Plug-in 7.1
- RealPlayer Version Plugin
- RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
- Shockwave Flash
- Shockwave for Director
- Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

My Firefox on WinXP has been open about 8 hours and is using only 129 MB so far. I have 16 extensions loaded right now. Generated: Sat Oct 07 2006 00:57:46 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061004 BonEcho/2.0 Build ID: 2006100403 Enabled Extensions: [16] - All-in-One Sidebar 0.7 RC 4: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/ - ChatZilla 0.9.75: http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/ - CoLT 2.2.1: http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/ - Console 0.3.6: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3181 02 - DOM Inspector 1.8.1: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/ - FoxyTunes 2.0.2.1: http://www.foxytunes.com/ - Gmail Manager 0.5.3: http://www.longfocus.com/firefox/gmanager/ - Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ - MR Tech Local Install 5.3: http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/ - Saved From URL 1.2: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bon%20Echo%20Saved% 20From%20URL - Stylish 0.4: http://userstyles.org/stylish/ - Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001: http://tmp.garyr.net/ - Talkback 2.0: http://talkback.mozilla.org/ - Update Channel Selector 1.0.1: http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/u pdatechannel/index.html - userChrome.js 0.7: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3977 35 - XPather 1.0.1: http://xpath.alephzarro.com/ Disabled Extensions: [1] - Free Download Manager plugin 1.0: http://freedownloadmanager.org/ Total Extensions: 17 Installed Themes: [3] - Firefox (default): http://www.mozilla.org/ - Halloween 1.9.5: http://edhume.googlepages.com/home - QuBranch 1.0.20060929: http://www.schrade.com/firefox/themes/ Installed Plugins: (10) - Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 8 - Microsoft® DRM - Mozilla Default Plug-in - OpenOffice.org Plug-in - QuickTime Plug-in 7.1 - RealPlayer Version Plugin - RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit) - Shockwave Flash - Shockwave for Director - Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

My Firefox on WinXP has been open about 8 hours and is using only 129 MB so far. I have 16 extensions loaded right now. Generated: Sat Oct 07 2006 00:57:46 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061004 BonEcho/2.0 Build ID: 2006100403 Enabled Extensions: [16] - All-in-One Sidebar 0.7 RC 4: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/ - ChatZilla 0.9.75: http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/ - CoLT 2.2.1: http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/ - Console 0.3.6: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3181 02 - DOM Inspector 1.8.1: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/ - FoxyTunes 2.0.2.1: http://www.foxytunes.com/ - Gmail Manager 0.5.3: http://www.longfocus.com/firefox/gmanager/ - Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ - MR Tech Local Install 5.3: http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/ - Saved From URL 1.2: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bon%20Echo%20Saved% 20From%20URL - Stylish 0.4: http://userstyles.org/stylish/ - Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001: http://tmp.garyr.net/ - Talkback 2.0: http://talkback.mozilla.org/ - Update Channel Selector 1.0.1: http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/u pdatechannel/index.html - userChrome.js 0.7: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3977 35 - XPather 1.0.1: http://xpath.alephzarro.com/ Disabled Extensions: [1] - Free Download Manager plugin 1.0: http://freedownloadmanager.org/ Total Extensions: 17 Installed Themes: [3] - Firefox (default): http://www.mozilla.org/ - Halloween 1.9.5: http://edhume.googlepages.com/home - QuBranch 1.0.20060929: http://www.schrade.com/firefox/themes/ Installed Plugins: (10) - Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 8 - Microsoft® DRM - Mozilla Default Plug-in - OpenOffice.org Plug-in - QuickTime Plug-in 7.1 - RealPlayer Version Plugin - RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit) - Shockwave Flash - Shockwave for Director - Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

Stock Firefox needs at least half a dozen extensions just to get the basic functionality it should come with by default.

And then people whine about unnecessary bloat. ;)

I agree with you to a certain extent, though (I would argue Firefox comes with more features out of the box than many other browsers to begin with, though), and it seems to me like the problem is getting worse. For example, in 2.0, the option to disable third-party cookies is removed. You'll now have to either install an extension or muck through about:config, neither of which are terribly great ideas to me.

And for the record, close button on tabs (or even the single one on the tab bar that Firefox has been shipping with) is a needless waste of space. When I ran the Firefox2 Beta I didn't even see an option to turn it off, and there definitely wasn't one built into Firefox 1.x.

Here's your option. It's squirreled away in about:config, but oh well.

Does it matter? Stock Firefox needs at least half a dozen extensions just to get the basic functionality it should come with by default.

I recommend looking at this as a start:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4051 51

There seems to be 2 bugs related to copy and paste.