Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Project Officially Releases Firefox 0.9
_xeno_ writes "The last release candidate was apparently good enough, because Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has now been officially released. New features since 0.8 are, of course, basically the same as in the Release Candidate, including the new Pinstripe theme for Windows and the GTK+ installer for Linux users. The biggest change since the Release Candidate is that this release should ask you to migrate your profile instead of just trashing it. So head over to the Firefox homepage and get downloading, or check out the Release Notes to find out exactly what's new."
mE123 adds "You can get it from plain old HTTP or from fancy new BitTorrent", and points out that (compared to 0.8), "this release includes tons of bug/stability fixes, a %3 speed up, a new theme and plugin management system, a new standard windows theme, and a smaller windows installer."
The source tarball seems to be broken on the mirrors (two bad bzip2 checksums from seperate mirrors), so no ebuilds for Gentoo and no luck for anyone using any arch not on the binaries list.
Shame that Slashdot missed covering the new release of Opera 7.5, another excellent web browser.
Release 0.9 looks pretty good so far. The new default theme looks spiffy, and basic functionality seems to be improved (rendering/loading is a tad faster, in my opinion). I also really like the extensions manager.
The one flaw I've noticed so far, though, is that the extensions options frame is a little buggy. When I finish modifying one extension and go to load up the preferences from another, the extension I just finished modifying pops up. If I go back and load the new extension prefs again, everything is fine. It's nothing major... just a little something that could be fixed for the big 1.0.
It killed off my bookmarks, so you have been warned.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
The two previous articles were both talking about the release candidate, not the actual 0.9 release, which just came out today.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Why do they bother wasting screen real estate?
For those of you using Adblock with Firefox under Windows and find it missing after the upgrade, here's what I did to fix it.
Check the new Extensions manager under Tools and see if it's there. If it is, uninstall it from that window.
Close Firefox and use Explorer or whatever to browse to "\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\FireFox\profile.3hd\Extensions" on your system drive.
Now you have to figure out which of these obscurely named subdirectories is Adblock. You can use Notepad or some other text editer to open "Extensions.rdf" and see. This string may be the same on all systems, if so, I'm sure someone can post it. Once you know which directory Adblock is still hiding in, delete it. Now go and install the AdBlock nightly from here: http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html
That took care of it on my systems. YMMV, as always.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Extensions
Themes
Keep in mind that the packaging requirements changed for this release, so not all of your old favorites are 0.9 compatible (yet).
If you want the old 0.8 theme back, you can find it here: Qute
Check this out if you're so concerned. It's easy. It'll fix the icon spacing.
mine is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9
To get back the good old Qute theme from 0.8:
;)
Right click this link and select "Copy Link Location."
Then left click here, paste the link into the "Remote URL" box on the right, and click Install.
Ahh... feels like home again
The unofficial
The link provided on /. has to be copy pasted;? id=231995
/. crew., the click on link shows a "Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled" message...
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi
Good to see that the message "(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)" is neither used by either the poster or the
One that page, the part convering the speedup thing:
2) more importantly though, MSVC just generates better code. take a look at
codesize totals for example: linux seamonkey went from 21148 to 20196, and win32
seamonkey went from 13101 to 12821. so, that's a 4.5% savings on linux and a
2.1% savings on win32.
Yes, I know a bit down the text 2-3% is mentioned, I do RTFA, but it shows as much 'substantial' evidence as todays 'Java faster than C++' article.
close the browser and re-enter, watch your bookmarks toolbar
Using it now, and it's waaaay faster and more reliable than 0.8. No more reloading poorly rendered Slashdot pages!
If you think the new theme is a step backwards, you can get the old theme back by going to the designer's site.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Easy fix:
Go to about:config and set to True. You will then have a page showing an error message if the address couldn't load, with a link to try loading it again.
On another note, a few days back someone mentioned a way to to prevent Firefox from compressing its memory in Windows when minimized. What was that preference name again?
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
--The new default theme...well, I'm in the "damn, that's ugly" camp. I went to Tools -> Themes -> Get More Themes to download Qute, and was taken to Mozilla Update, where there was a link to "install Qute now." I did that but it didn't work. I ended up having to manually download the .jar file and use the theme installer on texturizer.net to get Qute working--It seems like something's broken here, I dunno. Anyone else had a similar experience?
--FF's interface seems a bit snappier now, as well--it doesn't slow down a ton with multiple tabs open. It remains to be seen whether it still has 0.8's nasty memory leaks, though.
--I wonder if anyone else has noticed this: the menus now are rendered a little bit...differently. They no longer look as "Windows native" as they used to, and now resemble Mozilla 1.5 on my Debian machine. I wonder if this was done for cross-platform compatibility (So FF doesn't look as out of place on Linux?)
Overall, though, I'm quite pleased with the new FF's performance. It's a bit of a pain to go around and re-obtain all your extensions and such, but once you get it set up, it works very well. Great job Mozilla dev team!
Yes, it's broken and there's a bug open for it, you have to use mozilla-xremote-client for the time being. Unfortunately, the syntax is different enough between the two commands that it doesn't work so well with programs that foolishly hardcoded browser commands (like X-Chat), where symlinking mozilla -> firefox used to work.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
There is a connection. Ben Goodger, the lead developer on the project is from Auckland (http://www.bengoodger.com/about/ben.shtml).
If you look at the Firefox roadmap, the 0.71, 0.8, 0.9, and 1.0b milestones all have codenames that are Auckland suburbs.
There's one feature of Firefox that keeps me on Safari so far. I can middle-click (the scrollwheel button) on a link in Safari and it'll open in a new tab. Is there some way to enable this in Firefox for OS X? The options menu in 0.8 was distressingly sparse.
These threads were created to show which have been updated to work with .9:
.9 extensions
.9 themes
Yeah I've seen that quite a bit. I think that's slashdot spitting out broken html.
The page overlapping the menu is a mozilla bug. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527
This can be fixed in about:config.
Change general.useragent.vendorSub to 0.9.
They do seem to draw faster, menus that is, but it's still not instant. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining...this doesn't impair usability in any way...but why is it that owner drawn menus in moz can't be as fast as native ones in say...99% of other windows apps?
Again, this isn't a complaint....the speed difference is only noticeable if you look for it...but it is there...on my systems at least.
Well, is it just me or does the slashdot bug is till there?
To reproduce:
1. type in www.slashdot.org
2. Hit refresh until you see the main part overlapping the left part. Should be pretty quick (2-3 retries on my machine)
Oh well... Mozilla 1.7 out and that bug still there...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
...You'll regret it if you don't
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4 843
config.trim_on_minimize -> false
Makes Firefox and Mozilla always responsive. More details here: Link
Prog.
Old extensions and themes are going to be broken so you're going to have to make a new profile and install new versions. Here are the extensions and themes that have been updated.
I tried to put the list in here since MozillaZine always gets /.ed, but it wouldn't make it past the filter.
They are an IE invention. IE stores them in your cache and "forgets" them when they disappear from your cache. Raymond Chen had a good explanation
on his blog of why this behavior seemed better than having IE constantly hit the servers of all of the sites in your favorites to check for icons, or other alternatives.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
There is no new plugin management system but a new EXTENSION management system.
Found a solution via Firefox Forums.
Now, firefox -remote 'ping()' should be firefox -a firefox -remote 'ping()'. Also, firefox -remote 'openURL(http://slashdot.org/, new-tab)' should be firefox -a firefox -remote 'openURL(http://slashdot.org/, new-tab)'. Etc.
Let's see, do you mean Phoenix? 'Cause here's the versions:
Phoenix 0.1
Phoenix 0.2
Phoenix 0.3
Phoenix 0.4
Phoenix 0.5
Phoenix 0.6
Firebird 0.7
Firefox 0.8
Firefox 0.9
Firebird was actually the SHORTEST lived name for the Mozilla standalone browser formerly known as Phoenix.
I stupidly put off switching for the same reason, but with a little customization you can do it in even fewer keystrokes with Firefox.
Enter about:config in the location bar, set keyword.URL to http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q
Now typing any non-url in the location bar brings up the google search results. No need to press the down arrow!
Kindly see Bug 151249 -- Middle click on links does nothing in OS X (You'll have to copy that link, bugzilla has a referrer check to block links from slashdot.)
Firefox & Seamonkey still use OS 9 event codes, which is why it doesn't work. There is a patch on that bug, but it didn't make it into 0.9, from what I can tell. See also Bug 106692 -- Rewrite mouse events to use CarbonEvents.
Enter about:config then look at network.http.max-connections through network.http.proxy.pipelining. You can make the page load very very fast by changing these values. You can change these for IE in the registry. Like all benchmarks the above test only tells about a specific work load.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Like if I did a "back" to return to the /. homepage, I'll get a message like "the page / cannot be found" or some shit.
2
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12366
It's been marked fixed, yet it still isn't.
The new theme is butt ugly.
No argument there.
It goes into a crash&restart loop that is tedious to stop.
.dmg, don't put it in a .dmg!
If it's not going to work right from the
This is on Panther.
Just map you middle moust button to CMD+Click with whatever driver your mouse software uses. Safari seems to not need it mapped (but still works if it is). I needed to set it explicitly for FF.
Ciao
Then it's a probably an error in the slashdot HTML :) Afterall they did block you from checking it with the W3C Validator ;)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Firefox 0.9 fixes any speed issues it once had. I have to say this is the speediest browser I've ever used under Windows.
All-In-One Mouse Gestures features tab scrolling. Hold down the right mouse button and then use your wheel to quickly page between tabs. Now you don't even have to move the mouse to the tab bar.
The only people not using mouse gestures are people who haven't tried it for a week.
The last Phoenix was 0.5, not 0.6. The 0.6 release was under the Firebird name as well.
Yeah, that gets me too. The slashdot bug is bug 217527 and as seen in comment 81 was backed out of the aviary (Firefox 0.9 and 1.0, and Thunderbird 0.7 and above) branch because it caused a regression (bug 246382). If you get a trunk build, the bug will be fixed.
* You'll have to copy/paste those links into your Address Bar, because bugzilla blocks links from slashdot.
Get Firefox!
FireFox hides the tab menu by default when only one tab is in use-- to allow for more screen size on pages. You can always hit CTRL+T on Windows to open a new blank tab automatically in FireFox, Apple(Command)+T on Mac OS X to open a new blank tab in both Safari and FireFox. I dunno about Linux to open new blank tabs, since I don't have my linux box up yet..
You may also be able to keep the tab menu bar visible at all times by going to the preferences... but I never cared it wasn't there, because I use hotkeys to open empty tabs anyway. And I use FireFox exclusively on my Windows machine and Safari on my iBook.
It has to do with slashcode producing REALLY ugly non-conforming HTML. The reason that it's random has to do with character spacing AFAIK. The fact that IE doesn't puke on the horrible HTML has no reflection on the quality of IE or Mozilla.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"Periodically check for updates" -- it won't install anything unless you tell it to.
.xpi link. If it's not checked, you can't install any extensions. Get your browser the way you want it, then uncheck it.
"Allow websites to install software" -- if it's checked, you can install extensions by clicking on a
"Select new tabs opened from links" -- just what it says. If you click on a link and have it open in a tab (like middle-clicking a link), this option will select the new tab instead of loading it in the background.
And it's under Edit > Preferences > Advanced.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Web Archives are the only reason I use IE now and I imagine some enterprising minds are working on this....please!
-- Sig meltdown immine...
Well, noting the fact that Mozilla Firebird was used for the 0.6 release, some dates might be appropriate. From the roadmap:
Phoenix 0.1-Firebird 0.6 release 9/23/2002-5/16/2003
Firebird 0.6-Firefox 0.8 5/16/2003-2/9/2004
Firefox 0.8-present 2/9/2004-???
So, by actual timeline, Phoenix was used for less than a year, while Firebird was used for nearly a year, and Firefox is indefinite. Firebird did only comprise two releases, it just so happens that those two releases took a damn long time.
Want even more speed? (I did not come up with this, I read it on a forum).
Enter about:config into the title bar.
Set network.http.pipelining to True
Set network.http.pipelining.firstrequest to True
Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8 (I'm told higher values get ignored).
Finally and most important, set nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0
Enjoy the snappyness that results.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Here's a tip that you may find useful--create a bookmark for google and enter the following information:
& ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=& lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi =&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=imag es
/ bookma rks/
Location: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&num=50&hl=en
Keyword: gg
You can use anything for the keyword, but in this example, you can simply type "gg " and it automatically searches Google for the given search text. It's even fewer keys than having to press the down arrow.
This is an older link that explains it more, I can't find the Firefox specific link right now:
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002
The 3% speed increase is supposed to be due to one particular change (an update to the string library). Perhaps there are other speed improvements as well.
Control-T on Linux.
You may also be able to keep the tab menu bar visible at all times by going to the preferences... but I never cared it wasn't there
Prefrences --> Advanced --> Browsing --> Hide the tab bar when only one web site is open.
You can also go to View --> Toolbars --> Customize and add the New Tab button to a toolbar.
End of Line.
At last, Firefox does not require a restart to switch themes.
Here's the link to the FTP site where you can also pick up a ZIP file containing the Windows version. I find that nicer than the installer, sometimes.
I would still advise backing up your Mozilla and Phoenix directories just in case, but in my case it imported all the settings from Firefox 0.8 with no trouble at all.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I don't know if it currently works with 0.9RC/0.9, although i expect a new version that does will be out soon if needed, but i use MozBackup for backing up Firefox and Thunderbird.
You didn't specify the platform, but under Windows your old data was stored (for Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix <= 0.8) in the directory
\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Phoenix\
So you can grab your bookmarks from there (that directory should not have been deleted). Alternatively, you could try copying that folder to "Firefox", but you may find wierd things happening with your extensions if you try that (that said, it seemed to work for me OK). The old nightly builds from a couple of weeks back imported your IE settings rather than your old Firefox settings - I guess that bug's still there. (Although how on earth it got to be released with such a stupid bug I don't know!)
If you were using Firefox 0.8 under linux then your settings were already under ~/.firefox - so you shouldn't have lost any data but there's not much you can do if you have. It's a good lesson in backing up your home directory, I'm afraid!
Pipelining is the same as persistent connections except that the browser doesn't wait for the response to the second request before sending the third request. Pipelining saves the server and the user a little bit of bandwidth and make the page load faster, so I don't see why a server admin would not like pipelining. I don't know where you got the idea that pipelining was "hogging" anything.
The shareholder is always right.
I really enjoy the new version but have noticed that the Firefox browser loads much slower initially than IE. I have tested this on two machines. Anyone else with the same problem? :-)
IE is preloaded by windows, so always starts nearly instantly. Just keep firefox open
You still only have one connection open. Pipelining just says, "I want this list of URIs" and the server returns the pages in order -- over the same persistant connection that a non-pipelined request would take place. I don't see that as hogging connections.
æeee!
In Linux, the middle-mouse is set up to cut/paste text from the clipboard and to navigate to the test in the clipboard as if it is a URL (following conventions that go back over twenty years). However, you can also set it up with Windows conventions via FireFox's advanced preferences:
Now Mozilla FireFox will follow Window's mouse conventions.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
This is a known bug.
From bugzilla:
NOTE - Do not install Firefox over the top of another Firefox installation. If you want to install Firefox 0.9 into the same folder that you had Firefox 0.8 in, uninstall Firefox 0.8 first. Upgrading will be fixed in a future release.
Bug filed here: http://bug zilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=246868
Lots of Firefox 0.9-compatible extensions found here, including Tabbrowser Extensions and Googlebar.
Release candidates are unstable. They are released to find issues that were overlooked by the developers. If you tried it without backing up your old profile folder, the fault is with your own inadequate computer security and safety policy.
Pinstripe is not very ugly! I agree that is needs polish; however, there is little wrong with it.
The backlash is mainly due to inertia; most users - like myself - just got used to Qute. When the Phoenix switched from Orbit to Qute, I first thought it was a horrible, horrible decision! However, I grew used to it and eventually preferred the new theme. After a few days of Pinstripe, I have similar feelings. Qute is pretty good, but not irreplaceably as I once thought. A few tweaks to my user chrome override-file (not the changes making the rounds) satisfied most of my objections.
You people are seriously overreacting!
The theme was never in the download manager. Some erroneous entries used to be listed in the theme manager, but that bug seems to have been squashed.
There were license problems between Qute and Mozilla.org's tri-license policy. Therefor, they will not be able to bundle the popular theme with the oncoming stable version of FireFox Browser. :-( However, I feel the new theme is OK.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
I solved this by checking the Light box in the /. preferences. This also gets rid of several other annoying things (namely the god-awful color schemes).
how about using the URL about:config it is sort of like the about:blank except the opposite, very useful rather than near useless
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Did you uninstall 0.8 first before installing 0.9? I did that, and ONLY that and I have TBE, Googlebar, and Copy Image extensions running fine.
It didn't delete anything, probably. For Windows XP:
The data is still in the old installation folder. You need to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file to the new folder. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
As I said before: Clearly the FireFox team has some former Microsoft employees, because the team sometimes promotes frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
There was a nice post on optimizing Firefox (or any gecko based browser) in the Mozillazine Firefox forums here. These tweaks can apparently speed up page load/render time by nearly 30% for some pages.
user.js is a file you can create manually in your profile directory (where prefs.js lives)
user.js takes the same values as prefs.js but the values in user.js will always override the prefs.js values
there has been some mention of preference/config files. an easy way to edit these in firefox .9 is to goto "about:config"
That bug wasn't fixed for firefox 0.9, as far as I know.
Go to about:config and set the preference browser.throbber.url to the URL of your choosing.
This is bug 217527. Fixed on trunk, but backed out of the Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 1.0 branches because the fix exposed bug 246382.
The reason a version was called firebird was changed is because of the fact they found legal problems in Europe.
a me-faq.html
Another project owned the name 'firebird' in europe.
In the united states it was cleared, nobody owned it, but the european project might have bitched about it.
Here is a quote from their FAQ on the namechange
"The colloquial name "Firebird" is also in use by another open source project. While we don't believe our use of the Firebird name infringed on their trademark, we wanted to be responsive to the concerns of fellow open source developers."
Here is a link to their FAQ http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/firefox-n
Use about:config and set the options in there, it'll do it for you.
If just enabling these already existing options / adjusting these value samke Mozilla so much fster, why aren't they on by default??? Is there some downside?
Nothing came up asking me to import my settings from the old FireFox. *poof*, all settings gone.
Thanks so much, Mozilla Team. I appreciate it.
"network.http.pipelining.firstrequest" does nothing in current versions - the code that used to use it was refined (more than a year ago) and the pref no longer exists.
You can place icons on Firefox's menu bar. My setup has everything on the top, including icons, throbber, and address bar. After you scrunch everything up there, click View > Toolbars and turn off the Navigation and Bookmarks Toolbar. Add in Compact Menu to turn off menu items, and Firefox easily beats IE in terms of screen space.
That bug was fixed.
RTFH (Read The Funny Headline)
Like many here I have also been using mozilla/firefox for quite sometime. Actually mozilla, I switched to firefox at work because just need the browser functionality.
I have also tried the official 0.9 release, however, at the end of the day went back to 0.8 due to all of the following reasons:
1. Theme. It is not ugly, it is just different and I don't mind that. What I do mind is the lack of polish. I looks like a hack job to me.
2. Installing new themes. I couldn't. And yes I know why, I read the other ways of installing themes but I didn't bother. There must be more elegant ways of dealing with old incompatible themes.
3. Read 2 above. Replace themes with extensions.
4. The "new" themes and extensions managers. They are not new. They were just separated from the options dialog. And although it could be argued that it reduces cluter in the option dialog I am of the opinion that increases cluter on the tools menu and on the number of possible dialogs. Options are usually cluttered - that is where the ugly and complex meet to make the browsing experience beautiful and flexible. They could have gone half way where the new menu items would open the same options dialog but with either themes or extensions selected, respectively.
5. I am a web developer. One of the sites at work "gained" and horizontal scroll bar, where one isn't needed. It just scrolls 2 or 3 pixels and the screen resolution doesn't matter. This is an intranet site so the URL is irrelevant.
I understand that 0.9 is a development release and therefore there are bugs, problems, etc... However, even in development a 0.9 release should be generally better then a 0.8 release, and this doesn't appear to be the case.
I am now posting this from IE, because firefox completely fails to work on my system now. I believed that the problems I had before with firefox were solved ... they're worse.
... and NOTHING HAPPENS. At all. I test this from my quicklaunch and the command line. Nada. I can see firefox.exe appear in task manager and immediately disappear. No output. Completely silent crash. Started firefox in the "safe mode", and it tells me it's finalizing extension installation and that it'll take "a while". Five minutes later, that dialog is still there. Zero I/O or CPU activity has occurred. This is what we call "locking up".
I moved my old profile out of my windows profile, so it's totally gone from firefox's view (at least I won't have lost all my bookmarks), and I followed the advice of the mozilla folks. I uninstalled my old firefox (0.8) from the control panel, and deleted the old app directory. There is now no trace of firefox.
I run the installer, it installs, starts to launch
This is absolutely unacceptable.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I have just had to uninstall 0.9. I tried reinstalling, but for some reason, after a day of browsing just fine, I'd continually have to reload pages for them to appear at all. Then after about half an hour of frustrating me that way, I decided to close it down, reboot. All I got was a crash each time I started before the browser window even came up. Fortunately uninstalling 0.9 then reinstalling 0.8 worked. I think I'll wait for 1.0 and hope its not as unstable.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer