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."

Comments

Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the name-change going to be for this release?

Re:Firefox

[bhtooefr]

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.

Re:Firefox

[CeleronXL]

The last Phoenix was 0.5, not 0.6. The 0.6 release was under the Firebird name as well.

Re:Firefox

[GarfBond]

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.

Re:Firefox

[Andrew_T366]

While the Firebird name did not last for many versions, the name was chosen in April 2003 and was first used on a formal release of the standalone browser with the release of Firebird 0.6 (NOT 0.7) in May 2003. The Firebird name, used for over 9 months, was actually the LONGEST lived name for, outliving both Phoenix (6 months; September 2002-April 2003) and Firefox (4 months and counting; February 2004-date). It also helps to remember that the earliest Phoenix-named versions were released in very close succession.

Re:Firefox

[pcmanjon]

The reason a version was called firebird was changed is because of the fact they found legal problems in Europe.

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-na me-faq.html

Re:Firefox

[squiggleslash]

It had nothing to do with Europe and had a lot to do with the Mozilla team taking a lot of heat for being obnoxious about it.

When the Mozilla team were trying to change the name from Phoenix (because of the BIOS manufacturer of the same name), they looked into Firebird and were told early on there was already a FOSS project with that name.

Rather than say "Oh, ok, let's think of something else", they took legal advice and having determined that what they were doing was technically not illegal they settled on Firebird anyway. Because, as we all know, if it's not illegal, it's morally fine. ;-) [This type of thinking is the major problem I have with libertarianism, the fact is people will be arseholes, people will not suddenly magically start being nice to one another because there are no longer any laws compelling them to do so.]

There was an uproar. The pseudo-libertarians argued that as there was no law against it, it was perfectly fine and the other project should just "get over it". Anyone trying to find the database project would just have to add a few keywords to their Google search ("database" wouldn't have been enough as that's almost as generic a term as "program".) Another half of the FOSS community said this was particularly scummy and wanted little to do with Firebird.

Eventually the Mozilla team listened to reason and changed the name again.

I'm glad they did. I don't understand the logic of deliberately switching to a name you know is used, especially when you know it'll just cause harm to another group that really doesn't deserve that.

Re:Firefox

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

And don't forget the plugin/extension that randomly renames Firefox every time you run it or change windows.

I got "Mozilla Buttpanda" last night and nearly dropped my beer from laughing so hard. (Beer, of course, being key in thinking that "buttpanda" is hysterical in the first place.)

No source though

[keesh]

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.

Re:No source though

[DivineHawk]

"The original source was incomplete. An updated source tarball was released from mozilla.org."

It's on BT just fine Mozilla Firefox 0.9 Source Fixed

Re:No source though

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Their binary Linux version has a minor problem too; it set root ownership of the user-specific config directory when installed, making it impossible for that user to run the browser.

To fix the problem, I did a
# chown -R user:user /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/

Re:No source though

[frodo from middle ea]

Extensions are not working at all.

I get some XML parser exception in a big pane below status bar. i.e. after installing any extension and restarting firefox, The status bar is at about half the window height and there is some other pane with XML parsing errors .

Also trying to configure any extension gives XML parsing errors.

Re:No source though

[jweage]

According to the release notes, the extension API has changed for 0.9.

See the Mozilla Firefox 0.9 Release Notes.

Josh

Firefox is great

[titaniam]

I wrote a website that displays 250 or more favicon.ico website icons at a time, and the difference in loading speed/rendering quality between Firefox and MSIE is amazing. The icons are small, but each is loaded from a different website around the world, so it is a good test of loading speed for many small items. It's ironic that the icons are usually of type "microsoft icon resource" and MSIE fails to display more than half of them.
If you have Firefox, make sure to get the Linky plugin (I'm not responsible for that one, but it is a very useful plugin) if you like to open multiple links at once from a given webpage.

Re:Firefox is great

[hkfczrqj]

I was going to complain the same thing, until I saw the "also show potentially incompatible icons" link.

Try again :)

Re:Firefox is great

[magefile]

Are you familiar with the Pornzilla project?

Re:Firefox is great

[chgros]

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 :-)

Re:Firefox is great

[timmyf2371]

Are you familiar with the Pornzilla project?

Umm, wow. Why hasn't this been mentioned before? It's like a teenager's wet dream!!

Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame that Slashdot missed covering the new release of Opera 7.5, another excellent web browser.

Re:Opera

[zsau]

But a closed source one...

Re:Opera

[smallstepforman]

I still prefer Opera 7.x to Firebird. Opera seems faster, has more keyboard shortcuts which I use, seems to be more compliant (with the pages I visit), has better Java integration (for coorporate Intranet sites), seems to remember customized layouts better, looks better, etc. In my book, Opera 7.x is still #1 browser.

But for BeOS/Zeta (my #2 platform), I dont get Opera, so Firebird is my only option there. I can live with it, but I miss Opera.

Good so far, but...

[dotslashconfig]

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.

Re:Good so far, but...

[TheRealSlimShady]

The new default theme looks spiffy

I don't know if I've got some beta release of 0.9 on Windows, but "spiffy" would be the last word I would use to describe the default theme. Butt ugly springs to mind. It reminds me of Netscape 1.0. I had to download Qute to get it to look decent again. Presentation is everything, and the default theme just makes it look like a crappy browser (which it isn't).

Re:Good so far, but...

[Skynyrd]

The one flaw I've noticed so far, though, is that the extensions options frame is a little buggy.

Yes, i's "a little buggy". Most of my extensions no longer work. At all.
The upgrade moved my bookmarks, cookies, etc, but failed to deal with my extensions. So I went and reinstalled all of them.

Googlebar, bugmenot & mousegestures don't work. This seems not quite ready for primetime.

I'm on Win2k

Re:Good so far, but...

[bjdevil66]

The old extensions need to be updated to fit the new extensions theme manager. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=246043 for details on the "bug". Essentially, the extension builders need to update the extension or it won't appear in the theme manager, even though it may install.

There's also a new extension that you can install to make the old extensions visible, but the old extensions are still not removable after installation, unlike the new extensions.

One other issue I see with the extension manager: after installing enough extensions to make a scrollbar appear, it was difficult to scroll and the manager became really sluggish. However, I imagine that this is a minor problem that will be worked out over time.

Just emerged it!

[maskedbishounen]

While not on portage (yet), Gentoo users can find an ebuild over here.

It killed off my bookmarks, so you have been warned.

Re:Just emerged it!

[Dan Ost]

In my opinion, gentoo is a great (meta)distribution for people who want to
learn because it doesn't hide anything from you and doesn't do anything without
you telling it to. At the same time, it makes the uninteresting parts of
managing a machine easy to automate so that I can spend time doing things
I find interesting.

Ultimately, I see no qualitative difference between 'emerge foo' and
'tar xvf foo.tar; cd foo; configure -prefix=...; make; make install'.
The hard part is knowing what you need, not following the install recipe
from the README once you've downloaded the source.

Re:Just emerged it!

[VertigoAce]

It has to do with maintainability. If you compile every program yourself, you have to be completely responsible for tracking the versions and dependencies of every application. Say you have 200 packages on your computer (fewer than a standard desktop system). Six months from now, do you really want to be tracking down where you got all those from, whether or not they've changed, and then install them all by hand?

Sure, you're free to do ./configure; make; make install if you want. Issuing those three commands is not why people like Gentoo. Some like building their system from the ground up (this teaches you a bit about the different layers of your system). Others like the package management system, for source or binary packages. Others like having programs optimized for their specific processor.

Nope.

[irokitt]

The two previous articles were both talking about the release candidate, not the actual 0.9 release, which just came out today.

Not a single reason

[Anonymous Coward]

On why should anyone upgrade to 0.9?

The icons on the bookmark tabs disappeared in 0.7. That didnt get fixed in 0.8, the icons are still disappearing in 0.9.

If the Internet connection goes down, the page loses the address it was trying to load. And is never able to retrieve it when the connection comes back up.

Should have been fixed in 0.7, still there.

JavaScript code parses switch statements incorrectly. Who wants to guess what Firefox shows for this simple snippet?

var a = 10;
a = 9;
var b = 10;
switch(b)
{
case a:
alert('got it');
break;
default:
alert('passed');
}

Re:Not a single reason

[Anonymous Coward]

close the browser and re-enter, watch your bookmarks toolbar

Re:Not a single reason

[Dr. Mojura]

If the Internet connection goes down, the page loses the address it was trying to load. And is never able to retrieve it when the connection comes back up.

Easy fix:
Go to about:config and set

browser.xul.error_pages.enabled

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?

Re:Not a single reason

[Anonymous Coward]

that fixed it.

So why not put it in there by default, or have the checkbox "Dont lose the fucking data when the connection is suddenly not present"?

I guess those support licenses need to be sold in some way or another.

Re:Not a single reason

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Before you complain about the new theme...

[MarkWPiper]

... right click on your toolbar, customize, and check 'use small icons.' Ahhh, much better.

Why do they bother wasting screen real estate?

Re:Before you complain about the new theme...

[RickHunter]

Hm. I found the small icons to be way too small. I did, however, remember to bookmark the Old Qute Theme from 0.8 and earlier, which has been updated to work with 0.9. IMHO, it is much nicer than the new one, at least under Linux. YMMV.

Re:Before you complain about the new theme...

[tomboy17]

Why do they bother wasting screen real estate? Two words: Fitts' law (for the more technical, less didactic explanation, here's the wikipedia entry).

Only 3%?

[eraser.cpp]

I'm migrating from .8 to .9 and the speed increase feels much more dramatic.

Re:Only 3%?

[XMyth]

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.

Re:Only 3%?

[kryptkpr]

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.

Re:Only 3%?

[jesser]

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.

Re:Only 3%?

[ensignyu]

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.

User Agent String?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... on mine the User Agent string still says Firefox/0.8. Anybody else see this?

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.8

Re:User Agent String?

[CeleronXL]

This can be fixed in about:config.

Change general.useragent.vendorSub to 0.9.

Re:User Agent String?

[PeterPumpkin]

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

Safari

[artlu]

Recently, I started using Firefox on my PC because of its similarity to Safari. Has anyone else noticed this?

GroupShares.com - An Investment Community

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we ALL did. We're watching you...

Re:Safari

[Woy]

Recently, I started using Firefox on my PC because of its similarity to Safari. Has anyone else noticed this?

Yeah, we did! And thanks for those pics of your wife in the hidden "honey" folder. Those came in really handy, if you catch my drift.

Re:Safari

[JWhiton]

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.

Re:Safari

[thesolo]

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.

Re:Safari

[John_Steed]

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

Re:Safari

[unclethursday]

[O]ne thing I find rather annoying is the lack of a "new tab" button like NS7 has, on the left of the tabstrip. I use that a lot! In Firefox I have to right click on the tabstrip and select the menu item. Bah!

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.

Re:Safari

[Any Web Loco]

I haven't seen your PC, so no - I can't say I've noticed it. ;^)

Re:Safari

[ahaning]

If you have a tab open, double-click on the area between the right side of the tab and the right side of the window. This should open a new tab.

Like so:

|[ tab1 ][ tab2 ]*********************X|

Double-click in the area where the asterisks are.

HTH.

(Alright, Slashdot wants me to use fewer junk characters so I'll describe what I'm drinking. It's a rather cheap imported German beer that I got at an Anderson's general store in Ohio. It came in a 6-pack of 16oz cans for ~$5, so it was pretty cheap. I wouldn't have bought it except that the name (Henninger) is rediculously close to my own last name. Unfortunately, it's nothing like the Bass and Newcastle I've been drinking lately. Only one more can to go!

[Try to preview. Preview fails.]

Well, shit. I'm also partaking in some salted in-shell peanuts, which I've been eating whole. Normally, this wouldn't be recommended, since the shells don't really get digested. However, I chew the hell out of them so they're a little easier on me as they exit. Plus, it's pretty good fiber.

[Try to preview again. Preview fails again.]

what the fuck! i wanted to type this section in all caps, but i'm sure slashcode would get me again. so i'll just type random characters.

Okay, I would have had a bigger ascii browser window, but Slashcode just wouldn't accept it. So, I had to crop my "image". I'm leaving this random rant here just for shits and giggles. Enjoy.

Also, posting this under my actual account. The above was a mistaken post as AC.)

Re:Safari

[hawaiian717]

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..

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.

Re:Safari

[Quantum Jim]

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:

1. Type about:config into the url bar.
2. Type middle into the filter area.
3. Double click the text, browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick, and replace whatever's there with true.
4. Double click the other lines of text (about four) and make them false.

Now Mozilla FireFox will follow Window's mouse conventions.

Adblock

[Verteiron]

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.

Re:Adblock

[Dachannien]

I just redownloaded AdBlock off of the extensions page (click Get New Extensions from the extensions control widget) and it worked fine. Even kept all my old adblock settings.

There's also an extension that makes your old-style extensions from pre-0.9 show up in the control widget. Some of the old extensions (Nuke Anything, for example) don't seem to have been updated, but they still work fine in 0.9 if you enable them. Once you restart Mozilla you have to right click the dimmed extensions to enable them.

One Tree Hill

[fembots]

FYI, One Tree Hill is a suburb in Auckland, New Zealand. And apparently a couple of the code names are based on other suburbs nearby.

Re:One Tree Hill

[LadyLucky]

Yep.

Ben Goodger went to Auckland Grammar school, he was in my class :-)

Mirror links and other stuff

[Patik]

update.mozilla.org was slow earlier today. If you can't get in there, try these out:

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

And to fix the icon spacing...

[MarkWPiper]

Check this out if you're so concerned. It's easy. It'll fix the icon spacing.

Moz Googlebar Pagerank

[iserlohn]

They really need a proper pagerank feature in the moz googlebar. There was a recent hack to googlebar that showed pagerank for a page by querying a central server which returned a gif image. That doesn't work so well and is really slow.

Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gets issues with Slashdot and Firefox. In that the main area of the page overlaps strangely with the menu area on the left.

It occurs some of the time, not all of the time.

Poor /. html ??

Re:Am I the only one?

[vericgar]

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).

Re:Am I the only one?

[jsoderba]

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.

still "teh suck" on OS X

[interactive_civilian]

I really want the Firefox0.8 OS X pinstripe theme back. Not to sound inflammatory, but these new buttons look like they were made by the same design team that came up with the default windows XP theme...

any chances of it being updated to work with 0.9?

Broken `-remote' for Linux users?

[Croooow]

Have any other Linux users found the `-remote' argument to be broken in Firefox 0.9?

% firefox -remote 'ping()'
Error: No running window found

% firefox -remote 'openURL(http://slashdot.org/, new-tab)'
Error: No running window found

Re:Broken `-remote' for Linux users?

[bconway]

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.

Re:Broken `-remote' for Linux users?

[Croooow]

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.

To get back the old Qute theme from 0.8:

[Gherald]

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 ;)

3% speedup link.

[deniea]

The link provided on /. has to be copy pasted;
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi? id=231995

Good to see that the message "(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)" is neither used by either the poster or the /. crew., the click on link shows a "Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled" message...

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.

Sorry links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled."

The smartest thing I have heard all day.

Firefox is the best imho for multi platform browsers. Very small-footprint, fast, versatile

I use Firefox exclusively here, and it's great. I use it on Solaris/U2, Slackware/P3, OpenBSD/P2, Slackware/K6. It seems to fly on X Terminals/Thin-clients. Multimedia is handle well too, imho.

I look forward to trying 0.9. I'd have to say that for an 0.X release of software, it works like a 2.X release =)

Stop the spread of IE.

Bookmarks (Mac OS X)

[agenaud]

I cleared all my bookmarks upgrading a previous version, after reading rave reviews about reimporting old bookmarks (appearently on Windows).

Before I update from 0.9RC to 0.9, is there a way to save bookmarks? Perhaps as an HTML file?

Re:Bookmarks (Mac OS X)

[__aatgod8309]

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.

Getting the old theme back

[sbszine]

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.

My thoughts:

[ajutla]

--Firefox 0.9 really is a bit faster than 0.8. It's probably not noticeable to all you lucky bastards with broadband, but I can tell over 56k. I think FF is now about on par with, perhaps even faster than, IE, which was previously a lot quicker (for me).

--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!

Close windows programs ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the linux installer ask me to close
all my Windows programs before continuing ?

Re:Royal Oak

[darkpurpleblob]

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.

Links to .9 extensions and themes

[eraser.cpp]

These threads were created to show which have been updated to work with .9:
.9 extensions
.9 themes

Re:Got it

[Pieroxy]

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...

Don't forget to un-install your current FF...

[lhaeh]

...You'll regret it if you don't

Safari is slow too!

[goombah99]

Safari loads the 250 icon is serial order one at a time. Firefox loads icons in batches of i'd guess about 8 at a time and in no particular order. it must be five or ten times faster than safari. I wonder what is going on?

Re:Safari is slow too!

[SilentChris]

The funny thing about Safari is that it "remembers" favorite icons better than IE (sometimes IE just turns things back to the regular icon). I thought favorite icons were an IE invention.

Re:Safari is slow too!

[Frizzle Fry]

The funny thing about Safari is that it "remembers" favorite icons better than IE (sometimes IE just turns things back to the regular icon). I thought favorite icons were an IE invention

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.

Re:Safari is slow too!

[DustMagnet]

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.

Re:Safari is slow too!

[Apreche]

If you change the options in firefox in user.js in your profile as such...

// Enable pipelining:
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequ ests", 100);

// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

Then pipelining will be enabled and the 250 millisecond delay before rendering will be disabled. You may not realize it, but this makes firefox render a zillion times faster even on the fastest of systems. Especially if you have high bandwith and a significant portion gets downloaded in those 250 milliseconds.

Re:Safari is slow too!

[balster neb]

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.

Needs some work...

[chewy_2000]

to say the least. I had quite a few problems with the 0.9RC, but I assumed they would be fixed for this more major release. So, I download the exe (yeah, I use Windows..) and run the installer.
Everything's fine until it loads for the first time, when it says it's installing extensions. I leave it be for a while, but it's obviously not actually doing anything - no CPU cycles used etc. So I shut down the process, and load it again. Gives me an XML error. Try again, works but didn't port my bookmarks/settings and some of the buttons are missing (ie, the credits in help->about).

Needless to say I trashed it and reinstalled my 0.8 nightly. Maybe when it hits 1.0 I'll check it out again, but for me it's pretty unusable, and my system isn't anything special or out of the ordinary.

I miss from Mozilla...

[RedVortex]

The thing I miss the most from the Mozilla is the ability to type something to search directly in the address bar press the down arrow (selecting: search google for...) then [enter]... No need to add another space wasting thingy just for searches.

Sorry but I really can't get over it, I loved that feature. I was using it all the time...

Also, I still have some rendering problems with slashdot, sometimes the page renders on two side-to-side pages, very weird, it's happening right now, when I click preview, I have to scroll right to see the preview and the post comment boxes, all the rest is at the left, very weird...

Well, we're still under 1.0 ... Then again, just check MSIE, they are at 6.x and they still can't get everything right, hehehe

RedVortex
-- Please direct all bugs reports to /dev/null...

Re:I miss from Mozilla...

[mpsmps]

The thing I miss the most from the Mozilla is the ability to type something to search directly in the address bar press the down arrow (selecting: search google for...) then [enter]... No need to add another space wasting thingy just for searches.

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!

Re:I miss from Mozilla...

[dumpsterKEEPER]

Here's a tip that you may find useful--create a bookmark for google and enter the following information:

Location: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&num=50&hl=en& 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
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/ bookma rks/

Re:I miss from Mozilla...

[mcn]

Agree. Also, when I right-click on a tab, the "Close Tab" in Mozilla is right on top and I am so used to this, while "Close Tab" in Firefox (.8, I havent tried .9) is somewhere down in the middle. Why can't Firefox right-click menu options be the same as Mozilla in this aspect?

Also, firefox preferences menu is too simplistic (ok, granted, it's meant to be simpler and smaller than Mozilla).

I have on many occasions tried to surf the Net with Firefox, but still eventually, I come back to Mozilla.

Updated extensions and themes

[scragz]

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.

I prefer 0.8.

[Guspaz]

1) 0.9 RC trashed my profile. Yeah, 0.9 final migrates, but hey, now that my profile is ALREADY gone, it's too late, now isn't it? 0.9 RC should have at least offered to back up my profile for future use.

2) Pinstripe is quite ugly. I much prefer Qute, and think the Mozilla folks must be stoned to ditch Qute for Pinstripe. I will certainly be reverting back to Qute.

3) They removed the theme on the download manager. It used to be nice and themed, now it is all solid colours. This may be Pinstripes fault, however, if the theme affects the download manager too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Firefox supporter, and have converted numerous people. However, I simply think that several crucial mistakes were made in 0.9.

Re:I prefer 0.8.

[mriker]

0.9 RC pissed me off by tossing all of my bookmarks and preferences as well. I was relieved to find that everything was restored when I uninstalled 0.9 RC and re-installed 0.8, however. Did you try this? I installed 0.9 on a test system (after swearing I'd be sticking with 0.8 after 0.9 RC shat all over my stuff), and everything went smoothly this time... but I've noticed almost no real changes from 0.8, so I don't really see the point.

I agree that Pinstripe is ass-ugly. Using Noia (which I prefer by far), the download window is themed.

Re:I prefer 0.8.

[Quantum Jim]

0.9 RC trashed my profile. Yeah, 0.9 final migrates, but hey, now that my profile is ALREADY gone, it's too late, now isn't it? 0.9 RC should have at least offered to back up my profile for future use.

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 quite ugly. I much prefer Qute, and think the Mozilla folks must be stoned to ditch Qute for Pinstripe.

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!

They removed the theme on the download manager.

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.

Where are the md5sums posted?

[Radical Rad]

I downloaded from an http link. Now how can I check its integrity before I run the installer? I looked on the mozilla.org site and could only find checksums for Solaris.

A little disappointed

[89cents]

I have been using Pheonix -> Firebird -> Firefox for a while now which much adore, but I am skepitcal of this release. I do not like the new theme so much but changing to small icons is better.
I not so sure about this new "Software Update" section under Tools -> Options -> Advance.
"Periodically check for updates"? No thanks.

"Allow websites to install software"? Is this now another IE? No thanks. Well, maybe it's much more secure.

"Select new tabs opened from links" What does that mean? Oh, I think it was the old "Open new tabs in the background" option which was more intuitive.

Well that's just what I see on the front end so far. As long as they fixed some of the bugs, like "the page / can not be found" when hittting the back button. I also hope mouse over text for the tabs no longer gets in my way of pressing a tab. I have seen many websites freeze the browser which is very annoying, so hopefully those bugs are fixed to.

Re:A little disappointed

[xandroid]

"Periodically check for updates" -- it won't install anything unless you tell it to.

"Allow websites to install software" -- if it's checked, you can install extensions by clicking on a .xpi link. If it's not checked, you can't install any extensions. Get your browser the way you want it, then uncheck it.

"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.

Correction

[gbitten]

There is no new plugin management system but a new EXTENSION management system.

Flash sound blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there were an extention to block sound in Flash animations.

Anything's better than a turd

[EmbeddedJanitor]

IE is hardly a benchmark to compare anything to. How does FireFox compare with Opera?

Re:Anything's better than a turd

[spectre_240sx]

Being that IE is the most commonly used browser, I have to disagree here. I think it's a fine baseline to compare to.

Re:Anything's better than a turd

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The point is we know IE is crap, so what is the point of comparing to it?

When compared to a Model-T even a Skoda looks pretty good.

When compared to being hit on the head, sitting on a rock feels pretty good.

Re:Anything's better than a turd

[DarthAle]

Hey, I resent that! I'm very proud of my Renault Twingo. Comparing it to IE is unfair.

:)

Re:Anything's better than a turd

[4of12]

The point is we know IE is crap,

Sure, now IE looks like crap.

But several years ago when MS was actually in competition with Netscape the improvements in IE were a lot more evident at the time and were a lot faster in being delivered to the customers.

Of course, that was then.

The competitive landscape has changed and with it has vanished the necessity for MS to produce a browser to compete with anything other than old versions of its own products.

Users looking for major improvements in Internet Explorer will find them if and only if they upgrade to Longhorn, when IE 7 will be released (2006?)

Basically, Internet Explorer has reached that same point in a typical Microsoft product development cycle that Word reached long ago. There's no valid business case for putting resources into improving this product that already dominates over 90% of the browser market. Simply, at this point, the only valid business strategy for the next version of Internet Explorer is to leverage its dominant position to gain more business in different markets.

Bug linkage

[gumpish]

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.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123662

It's been marked fixed, yet it still isn't.

The new theme is butt ugly.

No argument there.

Noia extreme

[GojiraDeMonstah]

I hate to sound, er, metrosexual, but that Noia theme is truly fabulous. The gestures extensions are pretty stellar too.

Clunky download manager?

[xDCDx]

Is it just me or the download manager feels clunky? On top of that it is a resource hog.

I wish there was an option for reverting to .7 type downloads (a separate window for each download) until the DM is less resource intensive and more visually appealing.

Maybe the problem is that I'm used to GetRight as a download manager (a comercial one, one of the best in my opinion) and I don't stand anything worse. Check it out here: www.getright.com

If you launch it from the mounted .dmg on OS X

[cjwl]

It goes into a crash&restart loop that is tedious to stop.

If it's not going to work right from the .dmg, don't put it in a .dmg!

This is on Panther.

Re:Got it

[OverlordQ]

Then it's a probably an error in the slashdot HTML :) Afterall they did block you from checking it with the W3C Validator ;)

It passes the libretto test!

[SCHecklerX]

Even more reason to put off replacing the little guy with a newer sony sub-notebook :)

As others have stated, this version is a bit faster.

The theme is fine. Just set it to use small icons and no text.

The only annoyance is that there is display loop problem when opening up the toolbar customizer (you can get around it by simply clicking firefox's titlebar...I have other apps that do this too...gtk2 issue?)

Another thing that I haven't gotten around to submitting a bug report for is that the prefs window assumes your screen is > 480 pixels high, and comes up off of the screen. Easily remedied using windowmaker's ability to resize with the meta key, but this bug is a little annoying, as the prefs info fits perfectly fine after I resize the window to fit on my screen.

Other than that, great stuff!

Re:Please don't generalize that beyond favicon.ico

[the unbeliever]

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.

Re:Those damn tabs..

[gumpish]

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.

Re:Got it

[SimplexO]

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.

Re:Happens to me, too.

[afidel]

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.

Web Archive

[TheOtherKiwi]

Web Archives are the only reason I use IE now and I imagine some enterprising minds are working on this....please!

Too bad...

[Trillan]

I love Firefox on Windows, but it's just really too bad they can't match Mac OS X's look on Mac OS X. In particular, the boxy little Windows-like buttons and ugly popup menus have to go.

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read before you hit Reply. Grandparent post says "Mac OS X's look on Mac OS X," not "Mac OS X's look on Windows." It looks good enough on Windows, but it looks like shit on the Mac.

Screen Resolution and Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they bother wasting screen real estate?

Because the developers have their computer screens set at high resolutions. This results in everything looking great at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, but looking really bad and even being non-functional at 800x600 or 640x480. This shows up repeatedly in the sizing of controls and windows and in generally bad graphics. There is a problem of the "okay" button being invisible below the screen and the top bar to move the window being invisible above the screen in Thunderbird for the message rules screen, among other sizing issues. And Mozilla's screen eating toolbars. At least Firefox has adjustable toolbars. But the problem of developers being clueless as to how their product looks to the average home and business user because of the difference in screen resolution used is a constant problem with a lot of Linux based software that I have seen. And I think it has a detrimental effect on Linux's acceptance by the larger population of computer users.

hear hear

[Suchetha]

i agree with you on that one. i REALLY loved that feature. it was SO damn simple open browser/tab type search term press the "down" key until you get "search on $search_engine" and hit enter.

i REALLY hope someone decides to bring it back. it made life so much easier for me, and along with tabbed browsing and popup blocking was one of the things that made the switch away from IE SO much easier

Suchetha

One thing I haven't seen mentioned about themes...

[Trillan]

At last, Firefox does not require a restart to switch themes.

I wish they would post this link

[bigberk]

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.

Didn't delete mine.

[Trejkaz]

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.

As a recent convert

[quantax]

I recently switched to Firefox from MyIE for a couple reasons, mostly doing with spyware & its ability to exploit holes in IE. After installing some of the 'must have' extensions, such as Tab Browser Extensions and Linky, Firefox is easily configured to give me the same experience and better than MyIE, which imo is still a strong browser (even if it uses the IE engine). My main complaint is a simple one, and that is that there is no option nor extension that allows me to minimize Firefox to my system tray instead of closing it, when I hit the close window button on the browser. This allows Firefox to re-open a tad bit faster than if it wasnt running at all, and is nice to have quickly ready to go. Given the relative simplicity of this option, I think the Firefox team should seriously consider adding such a function, which I was hoping to see in this 0.9 release. Hopefully they will 'fix' this in the next release, but otherwise its a job well done all around.

PS. To those who would tell me to use a system addon such as AllToTray or PowerMenu, no thanks, but thats not quite the same as being able to click the close-window button and having it minimize to the tray. Close, but no cigar.

Re:IMPORTANT ! Save your bookmarks. IT DELETES!!!!

[shellbeach]

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!

SAVE MY BANDWIDTH (And to fix the icon spacing...)

[Rayban]

Either use this Freecache link to save the HTML bandwidth, or read the text below:

All my readers, please note that this is constructive criticism (as well as a fix!) for the new theme, not an emotional rant or complaint. Ben Goodger has done an awesome job in getting Firefox ready for 0.9.

The first time I fired up Firefox 0.9, I wasn't too happy with the new, default Firefox theme. However, It turns out that it mostly the awkward spacing that was making the icons look out-of-place. As strange as it seems, reducing the spacing makes the entire theme look a lot better.

I managed to reduce the spacing on the toolbar buttons by hacking the skin chrome. You'll need to place this in a file named "userChrome.css" under your Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\profile\chrome directory.

<pre>
.toolbarbutton-1,
.toolbarbu tton-menubutton-button
{ padding: 3px !important; }

.toolbarbutton-1[checked="true"],
.toolbarbu tton-1[open="true"],
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-bu tton[checked="true"],
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-b utton[open="true"]
{ padding: 4px 2px 2px 4px !important; }

best. plugin. ever.

[glwtta]

I just came across the Web Developer plugin - I think this just may be the happiest day of my life. From little things like resizing the window quickly to popular resolutions, to the live CSS editing, it's hard to overstate how useful this plugin is for web development.

Re:Sho' wish extensions worked.

[IdntUnknwn]

Lots of Firefox 0.9-compatible extensions found here, including Tabbrowser Extensions and Googlebar.

Re:user.js

[Lehk228]

how about using the URL about:config it is sort of like the about:blank except the opposite, very useful rather than near useless

Re:Sho' wish extensions worked.

[bmantz65]

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.

Great product, cruel installation.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re:Great product, cruel installation.

[Futurepower(R)]

The problem of not importing data happens when there are more than one user, and you happen to pick the wrong one.

In my case, inexplicably, I had two profiles: 1) Default User, and 2) Default. I picked the wrong one. After that, uninstalling FireFox and beginning again does not present the user with the same choices, so it becomes necessary to know where the files are located.

I've wasted several hours of my life looking for files when Mozilla or Mozilla FireFox have changed the folders where files are stored. (This has happened in the past, too.)

How not to waste the user's time: When changing directory structure, put a message on the web site with installation instructions so that anyone having problems can know what changes have been made in the folder and file structure. We also need to know what files to copy, and how to merge them.

Making changes without informing users is a Microsoft gig, and not one to imitate. (But Microsoft makes hidden, unwanted changes to network security, and that's a LOT worse.)

Re:Great product, cruel installation.

[calethix]

You might try looking on the support forum for upgrade instructions next time.
It would have been nice to have a link to that on the main page where everyone would see it before having problems.

I love this...

[Gordonjcp]

From one of the replies to his blog post:

Privacy Issues about the favicon.ico File


This give to web servers admins a way to know that someone has bookmarked it's site; the info includes the date and time of the operation plus the address IP of the machine which bookmarked the site, which can be used to identify you.

Ummm, what, like *every single page served*? Riiiight... If you're that paranoid, you probably shouldn't really be using a computer at all, let alone use the internet. I'm surprised you're even allowed out of the house.

Re:No user.js here

[linuxci]

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

configs

[baadger]

there has been some mention of preference/config files. an easy way to edit these in firefox .9 is to goto "about:config"

Re: poorly rendered slashdot pages

[Foresto]

That bug wasn't fixed for firefox 0.9, as far as I know.

ClearType screenshot

[PhilHibbs]

Can someone with a regular CRT tell me whether that Windows theme screenshot looks discolored on the font antialiasing? It is a screenshot of a machine that is using ClearType to enhance the appearance on an LCD monitor, because you can see a slight red coloration on the left edge of the font and a slight blueness on the right, if you zoom in.

I don't think it's a good idea to publish screenshots taken from machines using ClearType. They look better if the viewer has an LCD monitor with matching subpixel arrangement, but probably worse for other users.

Re:No user.js here

[Dave2 Wickham]

Use about:config and set the options in there, it'll do it for you.

Why not enable by default?

[brunes69]

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?

Re:Why not enable by default?

[Colonel Angus]

I believe there are... and I'm not 100% on any of this, but I'll throw it out there. This is /. so I know I'll be quickly corrected if I'm off on anything.

First, I believe that the default connections/server and such settings are set according to a TCP/IP standard. I believe the default max is 4? Regardless, I am under the impression that that is why it is not set otherwise by default.

As for some of the other settings, I don't know that those are necessarily the best settings for someone on dial-up. I only say this because when looking up Firefox tweaks I found a user.js file for broadband and another for dial-up. The dial-up user.js. I don't recall what values were different or how different they were.

Re:IMPORTANT ! Save your bookmarks. IT DELETES!!!!

[ikkonoishi]

That was in the 0.9 RC This is the 0.9 Official Release.

That bug was fixed.

RTFH (Read The Funny Headline)

The biggest change since the Release Candiate is that this release should ask you to migrate your profile instead of just trashing it.

Firefox 0.9 impressions

[spannah]

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.

STICK WITH 0.8 -- STAY AWAY

[scrytch]

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.

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 ... 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".

This is absolutely unacceptable.

summary

[Eil]

For those who read their comments newest-first, allow me to summarize 99% of the comments for this article:

1) "The new default theme sucks."

2) "It trashed my profile, crashed my computer, and lewd gestures at my wife."

3) "It seems 149x faster than 0.8."

0.9 is buggier than 0.8

[syousef]

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.