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Firefox 1.0 Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the let-the-downloads-commense dept.

New Here writes "November 9 has arrived and with it comes Firefox 1.0. According to its home page, Firefox empowers you to browse faster, more safely, and more efficiently than with any other browser. I'm New Here, but this Firefox does sound very promising! Firefox 1.0 is available now for Windows, Linux, and Mac from the mozilla.org ftp server."

55 of 1,112 comments (clear)

  1. Please tell me by msgregory@earthlink. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why should I switch from Mozilla to Firefox?

    1. Re:Please tell me by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No IRC client

      Get Chatzilla then?

      Will integrate nicely with Firefox and doing that will still avoid a lot of cruft in the Mozilla Suite.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:Please tell me by Bedouin+X · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Exactly. I went back to Mozilla after a while because Firefox / Bird can take up ridiculous amounts of memory when used together and only recently have either offered truly unique features (Live Bookmarks, Saved Searches).

      I have 1.5 GB in my machine now so I don't really care much about 250 - 300 MB that the two can take up combined under heavy usage.

      --
      Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
    3. Re:Please tell me by LarsWestergren · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, use whatever you prefer. For me, the change came when I started using an old laptop as my surf computer (feels better to sit in the living room with family and friends instead of in another room where my stationary computer is). It has 400mhz, 128mb memory. It had Win2K before I got my hands on it, and starting and running IE was quite fast (being integrated with the OS...).

      When I installed Mandrake Linux, I was disappointed to find that Mozilla took 5-10 seconds to load. It was also very sluggish to respond, a noticable pause every time I clicked a link. My friend who also uses the laptop called it ususable and asked me to please install Windows again, security be damned.

      Konqueror was faster, but I have never been as attached to it as I was to Netscape/Mozilla. So I downloaded Firefox. Takes less space on drive and in memory, starts in one second, very snappy response when loading pages. Both me and friend very happy with computer now. :-)

      --

      Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

    4. Re:Please tell me by Isaac-Lew · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Tabbed browsing (I don't use this my self) 3rd button triggers new tab when on a link, or triggers fast/slow scroll

      Mozilla supports both of these (at least 1.7.3 does, I don't know about any earlier version).

      Bookmarks better defined

      Possibly, even though I can't see much of a difference myself.

      Firefox looks nice, I was able to import all of my settings from Mozilla. Unfortunately, Thunderbird doesn't seem to have a similar import function from Mozilla Mail (why would this be so difficult to implement? They seem to have one from Outlook to Thunderbird).

    5. Re:Please tell me by shadow303 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At this point, I think my main reason for using Firefox is because it looks a little bit better. There are a few things that I find annoying. When typing in a URL, I liked the old Netscape style autocomplete, not this annoying drop down menu. There is not gui option to turn on the autocomplete - you have to edit a config variable, and as far as I know, there is no way to get rid of the annoying menu. The other thing that bugs me is you are stuck with the download manager instead of getting separate progress dialogs (I should check if there is a config vriable for this, but I doubt it).
      Early on, Firefox used to seem very light, but lately it hasn't seemed any lighter than regular Mozilla.

      --
      I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
    6. Re:Please tell me by some+guy+I+know · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Why I switched [from Mozilla to Firefox].

      Tabbed browsing (I don't use this my self)
      3rd button triggers new tab when on a link, or triggers fast/slow scroll
      Bookmarks better defined
      Mozilla has tabbed browsing and middle-button-opens-new-tab.

      Now, what I want (among other things) is:
      1. Clicking on bookmark link opens link in new tab.
      2. Ability to scroll the tab bar, so that when I have 50 or so tabs open, I can see the ones on the right-hand side.
      3. Have a download queue, so that only two or three files are downloading at once. Also, save the queue across sessions.
      4. Saving file saves to file hierarchy based on link name (yes, I am one of those people who saves files to, for example, "basedir/http/207.200.85.49/pub/mozilla.org/firefo x/releases/1.0/source/firefox-1.0-source.tar.bz2") . And, finally,
      5. Can display mangled HTML (e.g., Slashdot pages) in a somewhat reasonable way (without having to type ^+ ^0 each time).
      There are other things that I would like, but those will do for a start.
      --
      Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
    7. Re:Please tell me by dubious9 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Firefox is also believed to be faster, maybe not upon loadup in windows because of the OS integration with IE (even with the mozilla startup thingy). Faster (well, less bloated) than Mozilla also because they've been really trying to slim it down.

      It's more standards compliant, which allows me, as a developer to write more standards based code, *then* use workarounds for stuff which IE doesn't like. That said, IE still handles crazy markup without crashing or other artifacts (see firefox/slashdot rendering bug). Security wise, it's supposedly a lot better becuase it doesn't have deep ties into the OS.

      Top seller for me? I can put it on my USB drive and transfer it to the harddrive and it'll work, even on machines when I don't have admin rights (and aren't insanely tied down). I also can't live without tabbed browsing, and mouse gestures (an extension).

      What differentiates it from the stock mozilla browser? Well, Firefox is now the flagship browser from Mozilla.org and I wouldn't be suprised if they don't end-of-life the stock mozilla (technically called seamonkey IIRC?), so Firefox is the one with the future. I've been testing Firefox since their very early betas (.3 0.4?) and it replaced seamonkey on my desktop around .7. There's that automagic plugin finder (which has only worked for flash for me), new download manager. But other than that, there's not a whole lot of features that set it apart from seamonkey, i guess, but mozilla.org, rather the mozilla foundation sees it as the future. Seeing as how it 1.0 now, I don't see any reason not to switch. In a few weeks, of course, when all of your favorite extentions get updated.

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
    8. Re:Please tell me by mmcdouga · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I like being able to shut down my mail app without losing my work in the other in my browser -- and vice versa.

      My imap server only gives me a small amount of space for my email folders. When I start deleting stuff the deletion often only commits when I shut down the mail app. With Mozilla, that might be hours later because I don't want to lost my web sessions. I can restart Thunderbird without touching Firefox.

      Also, if one app crashes it won't take down the other. Crashes are pretty rare now, but when they happen it's still pretty annoying.

      Finally, it seems like more work (on the UI and extensions) is going into Firefox than Mozilla, so I might as well get on board.

    9. Re:Please tell me by Christopheles · · Score: 1, Interesting
      That said, IE still handles crazy markup without crashing or other artifacts (see firefox/slashdot bug).


      Well that's kind of an odd thing to say because the reason that crazy markup exists is because it works in IE. Of the possible set of crazy markup, you'll find on the internet only that subset which works in IE, because if it didn't, it would be changed to where it did. The slashdot bug I believe is an actual bug in firefox, not slashdot's code.
    10. Re:Please tell me by dubious9 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well that's kind of an odd thing to say because the reason that crazy markup exists is because it works in IE. Of the possible set of crazy markup, you'll find on the internet only that subset which works in IE, because if it didn't, it would be changed to where it did. The slashdot bug I believe is an actual bug in firefox, not slashdot's code.

      I totally agree. The mess that is a lot of html is from IE leniant behavior. This has been a topic for years. Strict Java or whatever-you-want perl or c, blah, blah. Still, there should be *no* html that will crash a browser, as has been shown recently. Failing gracefully is what I want in a browser and I have every expectation that this will be fixed in the 1.0 series of Firefox.

      As for the slashdot/firefox bug, it's a case of rendering spacing graphics, (a table-layout based outdated cludge), without including height/width information. Firefox renders first then "forgets" to re-render when the actual image size is know. It's also not terribly clean code. Slashdot and slashcode are notoriously ugly and bandwidth intensive. I tried to help on the effort to convert slashdot/slashcode to xhtml+css layout, but there was a mountain of work and not a particularly organized core of developers. If you guys are still out there, I'd still help if you got a website, a working CVS repo and some help from an article in /.

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
  2. Google hosted homepage by tinla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The new homepage points to http://www.google.com/firefox. Fire your conspiracy theories at will...

    --
    0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
    1. Re:Google hosted homepage by grimdonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You can check out this too

  3. Yay by shojun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm in New Zealand - got it already and running it happily. It's my birthday, I've just been playing Halo 2, Firefox is out, and today I'm buying a house. Things can't get much better :)

  4. More Links by aliebrah · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've posted some more interesting news and Mozilla developer blog links and a screenshot of the new Firefox Google search interface on my blog:

    inside aebrahim's head - firefox 1.0 is here!

  5. Rendering slashdot by nmg196 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well I'm reading this in Firefox 1.0 and it *still* doesn't like slashdot's code. It still occasionally renders the comments overlapping the left hand menu and it initially rendered this "post comment" screen double width - with the left hand menu titles taking up my entire screen. I haven't encountered any problems with any other sites, so I expect it's just slashdots dubious HTML that's confusing firefox. Mind you I hate to admit that I've never seen IE mis-render slashdot.

    Has anyone else seen Firefox render slashdot incorrectly?

    It can usually be fixed with a simple click of the reload button (F5).

  6. Next, SVG by wombatmobile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Next desire, native SVG support so FireFox wins the enterprise space before Longhorn even gets to market.

    We have two years.

    1. Re:Next, SVG by bunratty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can use SVG with IE today with an SVG plugin. Why wouldn't that be a solution for an enterprise that needs SVG support?

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Next, SVG by jshep · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Many companies (including mine) do not allow users to download plug-ins for a variety of reasons (security, ease of administration, etc.).

      An SVG plugin is a fine solution if the enterprise is willing to allow it. But what happens if a company provides a Web app to its customers, and those customers don't allow their users to download browser plugins?

      This happened at my company. We wanted to provide a map UI to our customers using SVG, but many of our customer's IT staffs (including our own, heh!) were unwilling to allow SVG plugins to be installed. We had to go with another solution.

      If SVG is built natively into the browser, this isn't a problem.

      --


      "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - E.W. Dijkstra
    3. Re:Next, SVG by wombatmobile · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can use SVG with IE today with an SVG plugin. Why wouldn't that be a solution for an enterprise that needs SVG support?

      Adobe's SVG plugin is a good solution and plenty of enterprises use it. Native support in Mozilla would be a more complete solution because

      • no plug-in install/admin/load time required for Windows
      • Mozilla is cross platform
      • Native support would allow in-line coding of SVG. We could write a HTML, SVG, MathML, all in-line however required. That isn't possible with IE.
    4. Re:Next, SVG by wombatmobile · · Score: 2, Interesting

      would you mind explaining why supporting SVG will allow Firefox to win the enterprise space.

      1. Data driven graphics.

      SVG is an XML grammar. Enterprises have just spent 5 years migrating and enabling their backoffice systems to exchange data as XML. SVG now provides an elegant way to visualize corporate data dynamically. It does this in the browser and the next generation browser is the platform that CIO's want to invest in and use.

      Microsoft learnt from following SVG implementations and then "borrowed" to create their Longhorn XML graphics environment.

      But Longhorn isn't available until 2007 and won't have great desktop market share until years later, even if it ships on Microsoft's schedule. Enterprise CIOs want to progress their IT now because they have business requirements they are responding to now.

      SVG is available now. Mozilla will make it cross platform and enterprise IT will be liberated. So many business applications downstream of the desktop productivity apps can just work as browser apps given a state of the art graphics system.

      SVG is that system; it is an XML grammar that interoperates with web standards and it is itself an open web standard.

      2. Mobility

      CIO's are spending on mobility now.

      SVG is on smartphones and mobile devices now. It is specified by 3GPP for phones and adopted by Vodafone, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Sharp, Qualcom...

      Mozilla + SVG is a story.

      See also Nokia webcast (see their software strategy), svg.org svg developers group.

  7. Re:More like pre-slashdotted.... by Kusunose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe it's slashdotted by Japanese slashdotters.
    On Slashdot.jp, Firefox 1.0 Official Release is posted on 2004-11-09 18:54 JST.
    It's more than three hours earlyier.

  8. Re:Mirrors by LogicX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Also don't forget about the excellent resource of Moox's optimized releases of Firefox: http://www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/


    His site seems to be holding up under the stress.
    He has Optimized Release Builds of FireFox 1.0

    I'm still waiting for 1.0 with SVG.
    Anyone?

    --
    May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
  9. Re:New York Times Ad by j0e_average · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The "three weeks" policy gives Microsoft, who doesn't have to worry about advertising budget, time to schedule a competing ad on the opposing page. Steve Balmer will tout the virtues of IE by proclaiming that Microsoft's track record with security is actually beneficial for the US economy. After all, look how many thousands of folks are employed simply because of Microsoft!


    Oh, and not directly related, but from MSFT site:

    Dave_MSFT (Expert):
    Q: Does Mozilla firefox have better security than Internet Explorer and is it a good idea to use?
    A: Hi Nicholas, I can't really comment on Firefox security however I can say that on Internet Explorer we are committed to security, the results of which can be seen with Windows XP SP2. If you have automatic updates enabled you can be sure that you are using one of the most secure browsers available.
  10. Dear Mozilla team, by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Congratulations!

    Here's to an excellent release that shows what the power of open source and community effort can really accomplish. Well done!

  11. Hide and Merge the sidebar? by Deathlizard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just installed Firefox today, and being a Mozilla user there's one thing that firefox doesn't do that mozilla does that I've grown accustomed with.

    In Mozilla, you could hide the sidebar by clicking in the middle of the edge of the sidebar. In Firefox they removed that and now to close the bar you have to click on the X
    similar to how IE handles them. It also seems that you cannot merge sidebars, such as the history and favorites, so you can't view them both at the same time.

    Is there a theme or a way to return that functionality in firefox short of rewriting the whole thing?

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. Re:New Here's posting record is fanastic by rapcomp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Better yet, I just change the target of the IE shortcut to point to Firefox.

    --
    Does this look like the face of concern?
  14. Take the "5 days with Firefox" challenge by citizenkeller · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is mainly aimed at Windows users (we know you're there!), but here it goes:
    1. Read the "Why Use Firefox?" document
    2. Go download Firefox and install it
    3. Use Firefox as you default browser for 5 days
    4. If, after 5 days, you're still not convinced that Firefox is the best browser there is, uninstall it and switch back
    (From an original idea on Spread Firefox, but the site is -surprise!- currently unreachable)
    --
    -- Serge K. Keller
  15. Re:1.0 right now by Eric+Giguere · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now be sure to change your web pages to detect non-Firefox browsers (or at least non-IE) and encourage them to upgrade to Firefox. I've documented the basic technique here: How to detect Firefox and See the headers you're sending.

    Eric
    Why the Vioxx recall reduced spam (humor)
  16. Re:1.0 right now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    The following extensions will be disabled because they aren't compatible with the version of Firefox you have just installed:


    WebmailCompose

    X

    TabbrowserPreferences

    FlowingTabs

    downTHEMall


    Then it searches for updates. Crashes. Restart and do over. Finds an update for WebmailCompose. That's it. So I guess I'm SOL. What a great browser. The best, Jerry, the best. PFFFT!

  17. Re:Mirrors by LogicX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    heh, well they're the company that I work for, and we have a killer server with much more bandwidth than we need, so I try to setup a mirror to give back to the community.

    We're not trying to slam you, we're not trying to rape you with popups or redirects. Just happen to have our name mentioned in the URL. Your choice if you'd want to use our services. I feel this is very similar to a sourceforge mirror of download links. You choose a mirror, the company happens to be listed on the left. They don't do anything except sit there with their name.

    I totally agree on the 'free ipod' and 'free lcd monitor' bit -- I don't agree with those MLM schemes

    Also btw, -- if I'd chosen to use my personal blog URL -- HornyandConfused.com instead of 100BigCoupons.com You would've thought I was advertising a porn site instead :-P

    I'm open to suggestions as to how we could better give back to the open source community with our spare bandwidth. We've contacted numerous open source projects and offered to be mirrors, but most everyone seems to have plenty of bandwidth now adays -- the only place I see is when there's an occasional slashdot story that links to a site that got hit hard.

    --
    May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
  18. Where is Preferences? by TooLazyToLogon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The pre-release still had Preferences under Edit in the File Menu in the linux version while the Windows version had it under the Tools menu. Does the new release have the same irritating inconsistency?

  19. Anyone seen this yet? by Westech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FF Default Home page?

    Die, MSN, die!

  20. Re:Too bad it runs like ass on my computer. by codepunk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No I think it is your computer that is running like ass because I have only half the machine you got and
    mine smokes.

    --


    Got Code?
  21. Watch what Microsoft does next. by MtViewGuy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Given that someone on MSDN said that Microsoft is seriously looking at developing a new standalone version of Internet Explorer, don't be surprised that before 2004 ends Microsoft will announce the public beta of Internet Explorer 7.0.

    If such a program does exist, I expect the following changes compared to IE 6.01 SP1:

    1. Much tighter security.

    2. Multi-level ad blocking (that includes blocking Flash and Shockwave animations in addition to pop-up and pop-under blocking).

    3. Tabbed browsing.

    4. Full Sidebar controls.

    5. Totally redesigned toolbar.

    6. Will only run in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

  22. Re:But the real question... by mccutchen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Read the roadmap: http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html It explains why development seems to be focused on Firefox and Thunderbird instead of the Mozilla suite.

  23. No XUL? by Fragmented_Datagram · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hmmm... I wonder why they didn't create a page using XUL, like this page:

    Google XUL

    This has become my new homepage in Firefox, although I wish it was centered...

  24. Re:Mirrors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What did he do to optimize it? The MozillaZine Forums link is slashdotted, so I can't read his answer.

  25. Does it still garble .NET pages? by Avalanche_Joe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been using Firefox for a couple of months now. Used Netscape for years - yeah, I actually bought a shrink-wrapped version of Netscape, that included one year of free upgrades. Woo hoo! I use IE only for sites that I have to.

    That said, I puked the other day when I surfed to my new ASP.NET hosted site and Firefox couldn't handle it! The layout was screwed up, the label colors and borders were wrong, etc.

    Being a developer, I understand the need to handle different clients. But do I have to create a dumbed-down version of the site for Firefox users (myself being one of them)?

    Does 1.0 handle ASP.NET better that previous versions?

    -A_J

    (Flame on, Slashdotters. I expect nothing less. And let me preempt the "learn php" or "learn XYZ" posts: I'd love to have the time to learn every language, platform, or whatever, that is out there - but I can't. I'm not an uber-geek (OMG, I used uber-, that is so last century) and cannot, no will not, spend all of my free time in front of a computer.)

    1. Re:Does it still garble .NET pages? by wcrowe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Don't take this as a flame. As a developer, I have empathy for your position.

      Just keep in mind that Microsoft is going to create their tools to work properly ONLY with their browser. Using these tools, therefore, will risk alienating a certain percentage of users.

      You have to decide if it is more important to you to use a tool which makes it easier to design websites, and therefore alienate a certain percentage of browsers, or try to create a website to satisfy the maximum number of users.

      The parallel that I usually draw is I ask people, "Would you refuse to answer the phone n% of the time? If not, why treat web browsers the same way?" This helps put things into perspective.

      --
      Proverbs 21:19
  26. Re:1.0 right now by TCM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why exactly is it that the extension API changes from one RC to another, anyway?

    Can anyone clue me in as to why the googlebar can't possibly work on RC2 and 1.0 when it did on RC1?

    Other projects adhere to some strict rules à la no API breakage in branch x and then comes Firefox and things break from one RC to another? What am I missing?

    --
    Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
  27. Re:The browser wars are back. by fastfinge · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Browser wars don't mean improvement. They mean:
    -- more coding work for responsible developers who need to get everything working on all platforms
    -- a general increase in the amount of sites who viciously flame you for using the wrong browser, even though you may have absolutely no choice in the matter (corporate requirements, screen reading technology, outdated machines, etc)
    --Microsoft morons purposely coding sites only to work with Internet Explorer
    --Open source Morons purposely coding sites only to work with firefox
    --even less support for minority browsers (safari, web tv, etcc)
    -- more bad feeling between developers
    -- more crap coming down the pipe to users who must now have two browsers installed instead of one

    I realize this has to happen. But I don't have to like it. "war" in any form is never any good. As the above poster said, this will be a war.

    --
    tired of online ads?
  28. Warning about MOOX by Zarxrax · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just downloaded this MOOX build, the m3 version (I have a pentium 4). First off, I got it up and running, and I noticed my bookmarks werent working at all--you click on them and absolutely nothing happens. I then noticed that it had CHANGED my windows wallpaper with a solid bright GREEN image. I don't know wtf this build is doing messing with my wallpaper, but I'm going to reccommend against people downloading this.

  29. MozParty2 -- Don't forget! by Wolfgame · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't forget to hit your local MozParty. Parties are listed at http://www.openforce.com/mozparty2

    I'll be hosting the one for New York City. Info for that one at http://www.openforce.com/mozparty2/?party=179

    --
    -- My childhood bathtoys were Toaster and Hairdryer
  30. Optimized official builds? by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I've been reading Burning Edge and see references to optimized builds. Is there some reason why there is not official releases of optimized builds? I understand wanting to create as generic of a binary as possible, but official optimized builds would be nice. The tin-foil hat person in me doesn't trust these third-party builds nor do I really want to compile Firefox myself.

    And example of releasing multiple builds would be the MAME group.

  31. 1 sec? by earthstar · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Takes less space on drive and in memory, starts in one second
    1 second?
    On my PIII,20 GB [ lots of free space ],64 MB RAM machine, firefox loads in 13 seconds.
    I upgraed the RAM to 128 MB. Now it takes 10 seconds to load!
    But the pages are faster though.
    --

    Why does yahoo do this
  32. Re:Acoustic couplers were only 110 baud by epine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You appreciated the breviety of the UNIX command line and the short command names (ls, cp, mv, ln, rm).

    There was a discussion here recently about how buffer manipulations in C are inherently unsafe. What people forget is that many of the original C string functions didn't even take arguments for buffer protection. That historical oddity resulted from 110 baud accoustic modems connected to development systems equally capable. Back then, you appreciated not having to add extra parameters to function calls because it made life bearable in other dimensions.

    I'd like to see a competition for the best engineered Java program written within a 24 hour time period over a 110 baud glass TTY to a PDP8. After reading the code that results, perhaps more people would appreciate that many historically crappy (and obscure) coding practices did not originate as conceptual errors.

  33. Re:Too bad it runs like ass on my computer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It may just be perception.

    Even though I know that it may be faster, Firefox feels slower to me. Why? Well, I think it's because (flameproof suit on) it's not using native widgets. It's hard to measure how fast a web browser is at rendering pages, but it's easy to tell when menus don't pull down as fast as you're used to, or checkboxes wait just a little bit longer to show the check. With Firefox, these things run just a little slower than other programs. Result: Firefox feels slower than even other Gecko-based browsers, even though it might actually be faster at rendering pages.

    (It also doesn't help that the interface looks different, too: menus, buttons, scrollbars, file dialogs, print preview, and so forth all look different than in my other apps. It feels almost like a flashback to Xlib days, when everybody *had* to write their own buttons, and that's not the impression you want to give if you're trying to sell a program based on its interface.)

    It's a shame, since I really like some of Firefox's features.

  34. Tabbed browsing broken for 2 years by Coward+Anonymous · · Score: 2, Interesting

    not to be a ninny, but when are they going to fix the tabbed focus stealing bug? This is an extermely irritating and confusing bug that affects every user using tabs.

  35. OS X and Firefox by puremisery · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I run Firefox on my Apple. Much better than Safari or IE. Though I don't even think they are supporting IE on Macintosh anymore.

    --
    -- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
  36. torrent status: Linux vs. Windows by mwilliamson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I started a couple torrent downloads from the .torrent file on mozilla's ftp server this morning and now have some interesting stats.

    Linux: 1.1 Gig Up
    Windows: 54.7 Megs Up

    Gig' Em
    -Michael

  37. Re:FP! by amembrane · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just downloaded it, I've been using Avant Browser, which also has pop-up blocking as well as flash blocking, ad blocking, and tabbed browsing. It runs on top of IE, so it more vulnerable, but the feature it has that I miss so far in Firefox is mouse gestures (right-click then left click to go back, vice versa to go forward). Does anyone know of a way to do this in Firefox?

    --
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  38. Re:FB! by SoSueMe · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You make it sound like this is an attitude exclusivly to Mozilla developers.

    I can assure(maybe unassure?) you that this is not the case.
    This attitude is prevalent across many development areas.
    Why?
    Ego.
    You have to have a significant ego level to think these things can be accomplished.

    I have spent the last 5 and 1/2 years in testing and test lead positions and recognize that the level of confidence required the create software from nothing is huge.
    The
    "Impossible! Go fuck yourself neil[at]neilpearce.com - Lotsa abuse - Oh... Ah... Hmmm.... You seen this? - Errr... Shit! - Hmmm..."
    is just unprofessional. Not atypical, but very unprofessional.

  39. Firefox on CBC Radio by wrecked · · Score: 2, Interesting
    It's the end of the day, and this post will probably be buried, but for the sake of the record...

    I was just driving home, and the CBC Radio (am) show "As It Happens" just featured a segment on the Firefox 1.0 release. It's finally mainstream!