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Firefox 0.9 is due out in a matter of weeks, according to The Burning Edge.

Mozilla's "zoom" feature helps this somewhat, but it still makes pages made with this CSS more trouble to read than they would be otherwise. It is a pain in the ass to have to edit the CSS before you can read a page comfortably. [Thanks, Jesse, for the bookmarklets to do that, http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/]

Putting * at the beginning or end of a phrase doesn't do much. Better examples of how to use * as a wildcard word.

Google's cache of Google shows the new look for me, but you can still see how Google looked a year ago here.

You can't use the bookmarklet to go back to the old look. Google shows you the new look regardless of your cookie.

Btw, the bookmarklet is still here if you want to look at how it worked.

Or you could rewrite the code to modify the hrefs instead of submitting the form in a hackish manner. That would make the code less than half the size (even when gzipped), make it work even with Netscape 4, and make it do the right thing when you shift+click a link to open it in a new window.

You should tell your readers about Firefox and Pornzilla. They make porn surfing much more pleasant and efficient.

Not surprising, since Jesse Ruderman hosts and maintains the Pornzilla project.

------- Additional Comment #4 From Jesse Ruderman 2002-12-08 18:22 PST [reply] -------
I agree that there should be a confirmation dialog for Set as Wallpaper. The lack of a confirmation dialog makes the Set as Wallpaper feature less useful to me, because I keep accidentally blowing away my carefully chosen Phoenix Wallpaper.bmp when trying to save porn images.

This is just another case of the FireFox developers staying ahead of the curve. Well done boys. Well done.

Use a Mozilla Firefox nightly build, the bug (217369, I think) that caused this problem is fixed in them.

More major changes since 0.8 here.

Use a Mozilla Firefox nightly build, the bug (217369, I think) that caused this problem is fixed in them.

More major changes since 0.8 here.

I'd like to mention that the xbl binding in the flash-click-to-play plugin is outdated. The newer version blocks more flash correctly (some flash still got through with the old version), but it does require you to edit your config files manually.

Pornzilla

It's funny because it's true!

To the best of my knowledge, there is no posibility of an all encompassing regular expression that can translate 1337 to english.

True, but the 'deleet' bookmarklet m4k3h r34d1|/| I7 4 li'l ez13R.

May I suggest the name "FireChick"

A hot chick in your browser? Not bad, but ... That project already has a name.

With regards to your dislikes:

5. Some plug-ins/extensions need to be added to the Mozilla Firefox setup file

Bundled extensions is planned for the next release (0.9), as demonstrated in the firefox roadmap.

7. Download manager clutter

In options, go to "Privacy", then "Download manager history". You can set it to erase download entries on completion, which is the setting I prefer.

8. Exporting bookmarks problems

Actually, replacing & with & is the correct behaviour, since html 4 does not allow & in url's. Firefox stores its bookmarks as html, so I expect that this doesn't happen on export, but on import. If you link to a url containing an ampersand, you need to escape it, always. Yes, it's sort of annoying, but I expect there are good technical reasons (which I'm too lazy to look up). Besides, every browser out there opens url's with & in them correctly. What exactly is the problem?

9. Default sorting of bookmarks.

Strange, it sorts them the way you want it in my install. Don't understand why you're seeing this.

10. Auto-update

It's called smartupdate, and it's planned for firefox 0.9. See the roadmap again.

11. Uninstall plug-ins/extensions

Firefox 0.9. Yeah, I know, they're keeping all the cool stuff for the next version. But believe me, they know.

12. Autoscroll problem.

This is only a problem for you, due to your dependancy on autoscroll. I use a scrollwheel, and disable autoscroll. This is actually a fixed bug. In previous versions middleclicking a link would sometimes activate autoscroll instead of opening the link. Firefox doesn't do that anymore. I believe the current behaviour is the correct behaviour, since it doesn't neuter the middle mouse button's ability to open new webpages.

2. Major issue with the Flash Click to view extension

This is annoying indeed, but it is predictable. Any other implementation would either require micromanagement or trigger flash displaying when you don't want it. And besides, anyone using flash for website navigation is a callous retard and deserves to have their site break in real browsers. (To anyone doubting this: think about what happens when a blind person tries to visit a website that depends on flash for navigation.)

The flash blocking code has been updated by the way, but it hasn't trickled back to the extension. See jesse rudderman's xbl flash binding page.

Moz has the certificate management stuff, but it's not all bundled with the browser due to export regulations worries. (See here.)

And regarding the benefits for upgrading from older versions, here's two fairly complete lists (moreso than the changelogs) for 0.7 and 0.8.
It's good stuff.

Moz has the certificate management stuff, but it's not all bundled with the browser due to export regulations worries. (See here.)

And regarding the benefits for upgrading from older versions, here's two fairly complete lists (moreso than the changelogs) for 0.7 and 0.8.
It's good stuff.

1) No print() or echo() function. If you want to write something to the equivilent of stdout, you need to use document.write(). And if you use alert() as you're debugging something, you'll quickly get tired of boxes that pop up, I know I have.

My JavaScript Shell and Simple JavaScript development environment both include a print() function.

The shell is good for playing around with the DOM and can be used as a bookmarklet.

The simple development environment lets you test longer bits of code, but doesn't let you use the DOM, only core JavaScript features like variables, functions, objects, closures, and regular expressions. Leonard Lin is using it to teach some students JavaScript as their first language.

1) No print() or echo() function. If you want to write something to the equivilent of stdout, you need to use document.write(). And if you use alert() as you're debugging something, you'll quickly get tired of boxes that pop up, I know I have.

My JavaScript Shell and Simple JavaScript development environment both include a print() function.

The shell is good for playing around with the DOM and can be used as a bookmarklet.

The simple development environment lets you test longer bits of code, but doesn't let you use the DOM, only core JavaScript features like variables, functions, objects, closures, and regular expressions. Leonard Lin is using it to teach some students JavaScript as their first language.

(from Burning Edge)

New features

* Windows installer
* New download manager
* Work Offline
* Add Bookmark dialog: recent-folders dropdown and folder-selection tree (replacing a single dropdown listing all folders)
* DOM Inspector is now included in zip builds
* IDN support
* IPv6 support on Windows 2000/XP/2003

Major improvements

* 220807 - prompt user about invalid text/plain content. (Solves most problems like "Firebird tries to display some .rar files instead of downloading them.")
* 214266 - Find should wrap by default
* 217286 - Cookie whitelist should override session cookie option.
* 142459(?) - Shift+click and middle-click on scroll bar should jump to that location
* 214260 - XPInstall UI improvements
* 33282 - enable external scheme handlers (like aim: and telnet:) in Linux
* 6% faster page loading (comparing December to September on a Tp (pageloader time) graph)

Important bug fixes

* 210910 - Right-clicking a file within a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks menu or toolbar makes that folder inaccessible.
* 203102 - URL typed into address bar lost after switching tabs; "Open in new tab" should prefill URI in address bar.
* 222157 - View Source: Find and Save don't work.
* 213250 - Autoscroll prevents middle clicking on links in XML (XHTML) documents.
* 224416 - Tabs don't remember focused element.
* 216170 - Send Page (as Link) omits query string
* 98564 - caret overlaps the last character in textfield (if positioned after the last char).
* 212366 - Make -moz-opacity apply to descendants as a group, as required by CSS3 opacity
* 219705 - Linux: Blackdown Java crashes, saying "Internal error on browser end".
* 102578 - Linux: Clicking wrongfully fires onmouseout (breaks some dhtml menus, css/edge menus)
* 201209 - GTK2: -moz-opacity makes things invisible.

... and much more!
You can also download a non-installer (.zip) build based on official installer build here and if you look around in the MozillaZine Firefox Builds Forum there's some Windows/Linux Firefox 0.8 builds optimized for AthlonXP/P4/P3/P2/whatever you have.

Well, if you've been looking at The Burning Edge, you might have already seen a slightly more informative changelog (like this one). There is extra information out there for those who want it; you just need to bookmark a bit deeper into the sites.

For those people who want to keep check on specific bugs, add yourself to the CC lists of those bugs in bugzilla. As a template:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=X
will show you bug X, and tell you whether or not it has been fixed etc.

Well, if you've been looking at The Burning Edge, you might have already seen a slightly more informative changelog (like this one). There is extra information out there for those who want it; you just need to bookmark a bit deeper into the sites.

For those people who want to keep check on specific bugs, add yourself to the CC lists of those bugs in bugzilla. As a template:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=X
will show you bug X, and tell you whether or not it has been fixed etc.

It's not the slickest thing, but if you run Firebird you can install Flash Click-To-View. It does exactly what you'd think it would do - replaces any and all Flash content with a gray box saying "Flash - Click to View." Works pretty well, except gets annyoing on those flash-only navigation pages.

The ads sure don't display for me on Mozilla 1.4 with this handy click-to-play Flash hack I saw on another Slashdot posting. <sarcasm>Oh, darn.</sarcasm>

How does it compare with using the user style sheet it's based on? Any reason to switch?

> Opera Software obviously has a single-minded focus to produce an excellent
> browser but in the long run all of that effort will likely be for naught.

> unless they change their license to the GPL (or some equivalent). ...yeah, because it's completely impossible to be innovative if your source is closed, right?

Bah. Small design and development groups can do wonders with the right talent and under the right direction, even if they're not sharing secret sauce. There are an assload of features that Opera does (and this assload increases dramatically with every point release!) that will take quite some time to be matched by other providers, whether they be Free or that other kind.

Opera has enough business acumen to stay afloat. They're like Apple: open to their customers, really good at inventing innovative features, competent at putting together smooth interfaces, and with a growing fanbase that will buy their crap even if they turn evil. Additionally, they're pretty good at adapting their product for out of the way platforms, like in the embedded sector.

I use mozilla now and then, but Opera has many advantages not covered by Moz, which include (but are not limited to):
* the ability to put the page bar (that's the "tab" widgets) on the right or left side of the screen, a feature that allows me to have forty web pages open in one window (that's pretty normal for me) with all page titles being readable (in Mozilla, the tabs shrink so that you can't read the title, and in MozFirebird, after the fifteenth or so tab you have to scroll back and forth to see available pages!).
* dragging pages between windows. If you use various Mozilla Extensions or something like Multizilla, you can drag within a window, but I think you have to right-click to move to a different window
* out-of-the-box session management. I have to install Multizilla in Moz1.5 in order to get session management, and that doesn't always work properly.
* out of the box gestures
* out of the box, on the fly browser ID changing
* on the fly skinning (no restart needed!)
* ability to quickly disable page's styles and special effects
* in-page print preview
* download manager docked in sidebar
* can drag individual "tabs" into bookmarks.
* hold right button, scroll wheel to change pages (Mozilla can do this with the proper add-ons)
* "G" key makes graphics disappear if you accidentally click on a goatse.cx link (this is much faster than closing the page in either Opera or Moz)
* SHIFT+Up/Dn/Lt/Rt to navigate among links on the active page
* auto-reload menu option
* "Fast Forward", which lets you navigate through multipage articles with a single gesture or keypress (instead of hunting down the "Next" link on the article page each time).
* Undo if you accidentally closed the wrong page (I think Moilla-Firebird can do this, though).
* toolbars can be moved around. I remember when you could put the address bar above the navigation bar in Netscape 4.x. You can't do that in Mozilla or Netscape 7.x. You can't do that (AFAIK) in Mozilla-Firebird. Hmmm. Well, maybe you can't do that in Opera, either, but it does allow me to put the address bar on the bottom of the screen, which is where I prefer it.
* CTRL-J pops up a list of links from the current page. You can emulate this functionality in Mozilla with either Linky (that's at mozdev.org) or with a bookmarklet (if you're not using bookmarklets, you're not interested in power browsing, btw).
* SHIFT-F11 to emulate PDA browsing mode (this is for web page developers that really do care)

I usually have a Mozilla window open, but the majority of my web pages open up with Opera, because the interface is smoother (and faster) and the session management is better. Nothing cooler than starting up your computer with your applications in the same state that you left them.

In the time that Mozilla has moved from 1.0 t

alert() *is* pretty handy for JS debugging, but these bookmarklets make it even more...um... handier.

Try this: http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.ht ml#generated_source It's a bookmarklet that takes the current page, and shows you it's source in a new window, without reloading. It's not the EXACT source from the server though, it's the cleaned up onebeing displayer. It's as close as we get, currently.

Replying to your sig: I'm happy with clicking to start flash animations, but I see how a whitelist of sites allowed to play Flash (without requiring me to click at all) could be useful.

Just wait until your spell-checker corrects "gonna" to "gonad" and decides to block the e-mail.

I just want to mention that Mozilla and Firebird are ready to do some deadly-serious ad-blocking, out of the box with no plugins. You can block picture ads with a right mouse-click, and Mozilla's popup blocking is legendary by now.

The one addition I have to put into every Mozilla profile I set up is a bookmarklet which zaps plugins to eliminate those annoying Flash ads.

Why doesn't "block images from this server" also block Flash from that server? Huh? Why not?

I just want to mention that Mozilla and Firebird are ready to do some deadly-serious ad-blocking, out of the box with no plugins. You can block picture ads with a right mouse-click, and Mozilla's popup blocking is legendary by now.

The one addition I have to put into every Mozilla profile I set up is a bookmarklet which zaps plugins to eliminate those annoying Flash ads.

Why doesn't "block images from this server" also block Flash from that server? Huh? Why not?

http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/xbl.html has some info on setting this up in Mozilla. The nice thing about this method is that you'll actually get a clickable button. The flash animation doesn't show up until you click it.

Or you can go to http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html where you can find bookmarklets that clean up a page after it's loaded. Very handy :)

http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/xbl.html has some info on setting this up in Mozilla. The nice thing about this method is that you'll actually get a clickable button. The flash animation doesn't show up until you click it.

Or you can go to http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html where you can find bookmarklets that clean up a page after it's loaded. Very handy :)

More often than not, the problem is due to poor HTML. IE typically renders "what they meant" while Gecko renders "what they coded." Check out The Burning Edge to see all the bugs and fixes in the nightly builds of Firebird. Check out the FB Bugs forum at Mozillazine and see how many of the "This site doesn't work right!" posts are due to coding errors rather than bugs in the rendering engine. Thanks to IE, people have gotten used to non-standard HTML and poor coding. If you write some really bad HTML that IE happens to render properly (the way you want it to look), and Mozilla renders it exactly the way you wrote it (errors and all), the problem is still your code, not Mozilla's rendering engine. Oddly enough, if you write correct, standard code it will work on any browser (disregarding bugs in the browser, which aren't your problem).

I too have non-technical family members using Mozilla. I actually haven't heard a single complaint from them about anything not working right with it. They love the built-in popup blocker and Bayesian spam filter as well.

You can extract passwords from Gator (or any browser's password manager) one at a time with the "view passwords" bookmarklet. Be sure to tell your client that vanilla IE (new versions) and Mozilla Firebird have built-in password remembering, so he won't have to type his passwords each time after he gets rid of Gator.

There are also some password managers that can import from Gator. Roboform is an example. I don't know if I trust any of them, though.

New features since 0.6.1:

• Advanced preferences panel
• Download/helper apps preferences panel
• Cookie whitelisting (through the new Cookie Exceptions window)
• New password manager
• Web panels (like Mozilla's sidebar panels)
• Alternate stylesheet support (through a status bar button)
• Close other tabs (tab context menu)
• Domain is shown for image blocking (image context menu)
• Send Page, Send Link, Send Image (various context menus)
• Autoscroll (trigger by middle-clicking on a web page)

Important bug fixes since 0.6.1:

• 206029: Flash plugin installer breaks firebird (really a bug in the Flash installer, but firebird works around it)
• 210910: Right-clicking a file within a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks menu or toolbar makes that folder inaccessible. (Fixed for the most common cases.)
• 210588: Cancelling download of .lnk file deletes target of .lnk file (Windows 2000 only)
• 212556: scroll wheel sometimes stops working after app switch
• 199819: setting browser.formfill.enable (save form information) to false doesn't disable form autocomplete (partly fixed)
• 205893#c31: Should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows. (Example GDI problem: when you open about 100 large images in 0.6, the browser stops redrawing content and even its user interface.)
• 212686: down arrow into autocomplete causes other autocomplete results to disappear

Important bug fixes between 0.6 and 0.6.1:

• 205989, 206026: Two JS/DOM bugs that broke bookmarklets
• 184202: Autocomplete crash
• 212487: Autocomplete is one character behind typed text (this fix caused 212686)

Regressions in 0.7:

• 214310: removing parent of focused elem breaks mouse wheel and textboxes (shacknews.com dthread mode).
• 218894: After closing history sidebar, search results remain (but search text does not).
• Several password manager bugs (218135, 218927, 220734, 217439).

Stuff you should know:

• The "Quick Launch" feature (-turbo) has been removed (217026).
• If you store multiple passwords for a site, Firebird will no longer show a dialog listing the usernames you have stored (216541). Instead, Firebird will fill in your password after you fill in your username. You can get the list of stored usernames by pressing the down arrow in the username textbox.
• Firebird does not refuse to use some old themes (217410). If you use one of these themes, your scrollbars and back/forward buttons will go missing.

New features since 0.6.1:

• Advanced preferences panel
• Download/helper apps preferences panel
• Cookie whitelisting (through the new Cookie Exceptions window)
• New password manager
• Web panels (like Mozilla's sidebar panels)
• Alternate stylesheet support (through a status bar button)
• Close other tabs (tab context menu)
• Domain is shown for image blocking (image context menu)
• Send Page, Send Link, Send Image (various context menus)
• Autoscroll (trigger by middle-clicking on a web page)

Important bug fixes since 0.6.1:

• 206029: Flash plugin installer breaks firebird (really a bug in the Flash installer, but firebird works around it)
• 210910: Right-clicking a file within a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks menu or toolbar makes that folder inaccessible. (Fixed for the most common cases.)
• 210588: Cancelling download of .lnk file deletes target of .lnk file (Windows 2000 only)
• 212556: scroll wheel sometimes stops working after app switch
• 199819: setting browser.formfill.enable (save form information) to false doesn't disable form autocomplete (partly fixed)
• 205893#c31: Should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows. (Example GDI problem: when you open about 100 large images in 0.6, the browser stops redrawing content and even its user interface.)
• 212686: down arrow into autocomplete causes other autocomplete results to disappear

Important bug fixes between 0.6 and 0.6.1:

• 205989, 206026: Two JS/DOM bugs that broke bookmarklets
• 184202: Autocomplete crash
• 212487: Autocomplete is one character behind typed text (this fix caused 212686)

Regressions in 0.7:

• 214310: removing parent of focused elem breaks mouse wheel and textboxes (shacknews.com dthread mode).
• 218894: After closing history sidebar, search results remain (but search text does not).
• Several password manager bugs (218135, 218927, 220734, 217439).

Stuff you should know:

• The "Quick Launch" feature (-turbo) has been removed (217026).
• If you store multiple passwords for a site, Firebird will no longer show a dialog listing the usernames you have stored (216541). Instead, Firebird will fill in your password after you fill in your username. You can get the list of stored usernames by pressing the down arrow in the username textbox.
• Firebird does not refuse to use some old themes (217410). If you use one of these themes, your scrollbars and back/forward buttons will go missing.

Bookmarklets for zapping annoyances.

nilson built Mozilla Firebird from today (September 1, 2003) and christened it the MozillaZine anniversary edition.

Check it out.

Note: this is a nightly, and happens to have some noticable bugs.

Mozilla 1.5b is not based on Phoenix (which was renamed to Mozilla Firebird). Mozilla 1.5b is still the old Seamonkey suite. I don't know when mozilla.org will declare fb+tb to be its main products or whether fb+tb will inherit seamonkey's version numbering when that happens.

In the meantime, development on Mozilla Firebird is still active. Recent Firebird nightlies have been great and 0.7 will probably be released within a week.

I would use this because I'm not l33t enough.

It is an official release -- it's even on the mozilla.org front page now. Here's the article I submitted to Slashdot (rejected):

Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 is available (download). Asa Dotzler explained the reason for this intermediate release: "Firebird 0.6 had two major flaws that have been fixed for a while now - the autocomplete crasher and the DOM security bug that broke most cool bookmarklets (and probably websites too). We _need_ to get these fixes into the hands of 0.6 users as soon as possible." Firebird 0.6.1 is based on the Mozilla 1.5 alpha branch, giving us time to avoid having major regressions in 0.6.1. If you're still using Internet Explorer, now is a great time to switch.

I just don't let it do crap i don't like (move/resize windows, remove my bars, close windows, etc) and suddenly, javascript is fine with me.

Start using bookmarklets and you might even end up liking JavaScript!

You can also use this greyscale bookmarklet (IE only) to get a rough idea of how a web page may look to some colorblind users.

Bookmarklets let you do something similar. See Highlight

More good stuff for porn link farms (aka TGPs):

Bookmarklets (mini-extensions)

remove redirects - turns those annoying redirecting links that only redirect you to the correct site 20% of the time into real links
hide visited links - most useful for TGPs that use images (thumbnails) to link to galleries, since it's often hard to tell whether an image link is visited or not.
linked images - opens a window showing all the images linked to by the current page
increment, decrement - change the last number in the URL by 1 with 1 click.
make numbered list of links - for when you want to use increment/decrement but some pages in the sequence are missing
zoom images in, zoom images out
zap - fixes text/background/link colors and removes some common annoyances
go to referer - lets you go "back" one page after opening a link (e.g. to an image) in a new tab

User style sheet rules

Look for "Always show a border around image links" on this page. It puts a solid blue border around unvisited image links and a dashed purple border around visited image links. The Mozilla version does not interfere with site layouts.

You can also use user style sheet rules to mark or hide links to known-junk domains. This may save you slightly more time than adding those domains to your hosts file.

Extensions

linky - includes "open selected links in new tabs"
leech - adds ui for wget-type stuff

More good stuff for porn link farms (aka TGPs):

Bookmarklets (mini-extensions)

remove redirects - turns those annoying redirecting links that only redirect you to the correct site 20% of the time into real links
hide visited links - most useful for TGPs that use images (thumbnails) to link to galleries, since it's often hard to tell whether an image link is visited or not.
linked images - opens a window showing all the images linked to by the current page
increment, decrement - change the last number in the URL by 1 with 1 click.
make numbered list of links - for when you want to use increment/decrement but some pages in the sequence are missing
zoom images in, zoom images out
zap - fixes text/background/link colors and removes some common annoyances
go to referer - lets you go "back" one page after opening a link (e.g. to an image) in a new tab

User style sheet rules

Look for "Always show a border around image links" on this page. It puts a solid blue border around unvisited image links and a dashed purple border around visited image links. The Mozilla version does not interfere with site layouts.

You can also use user style sheet rules to mark or hide links to known-junk domains. This may save you slightly more time than adding those domains to your hosts file.

Extensions

linky - includes "open selected links in new tabs"
leech - adds ui for wget-type stuff

More good stuff for porn link farms (aka TGPs):

Bookmarklets (mini-extensions)

remove redirects - turns those annoying redirecting links that only redirect you to the correct site 20% of the time into real links
hide visited links - most useful for TGPs that use images (thumbnails) to link to galleries, since it's often hard to tell whether an image link is visited or not.
linked images - opens a window showing all the images linked to by the current page
increment, decrement - change the last number in the URL by 1 with 1 click.
make numbered list of links - for when you want to use increment/decrement but some pages in the sequence are missing
zoom images in, zoom images out
zap - fixes text/background/link colors and removes some common annoyances
go to referer - lets you go "back" one page after opening a link (e.g. to an image) in a new tab

User style sheet rules

Look for "Always show a border around image links" on this page. It puts a solid blue border around unvisited image links and a dashed purple border around visited image links. The Mozilla version does not interfere with site layouts.

You can also use user style sheet rules to mark or hide links to known-junk domains. This may save you slightly more time than adding those domains to your hosts file.

Extensions

linky - includes "open selected links in new tabs"
leech - adds ui for wget-type stuff