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 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.

Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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...

[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.

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?

Only 3%?

[eraser.cpp]

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

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.

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

[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.

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.

And to fix the icon spacing...

[MarkWPiper]

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

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 ;)

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:User Agent String?

[CeleronXL]

This can be fixed in about:config.

Change general.useragent.vendorSub to 0.9.

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.

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: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/

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: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: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: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.

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: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.

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"