Firefox 1.0 Released

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."

Comments

Please tell me

[msgregory@earthlink.]

Why should I switch from Mozilla to Firefox?

Re:Please tell me

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:Please tell me

[Bedouin X]

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.

Re:Please tell me

[Isaac-Lew]

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).

Re:Please tell me

[some guy I know]

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.

Re:Please tell me

[dubious9]

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.

Re:Please tell me

[mmcdouga]

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.

Google hosted homepage

[tinla]

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

Re:Google hosted homepage

[grimdonkey]

You can check out this too

More Links

[aliebrah]

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!

Rendering slashdot

[nmg196]

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).

Next, SVG

[wombatmobile]

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

We have two years.

Re:More like pre-slashdotted....

[Kusunose]

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.

Re:Mirrors

[LogicX]

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?

Re:New York Times Ad

[j0e_average]

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.

Hide and Merge the sidebar?

[Deathlizard]

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?

Re:New Here's posting record is fanastic

[rapcomp]

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

Take the "5 days with Firefox" challenge

[citizenkeller]

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)

Re:1.0 right now

[Eric Giguere]

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)

Re:Mirrors

[LogicX]

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.

Anyone seen this yet?

[Westech]

FF Default Home page?

Die, MSN, die!

Re:Too bad it runs like ass on my computer.

[codepunk]

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

Re:But the real question...

[mccutchen]

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.

No XUL?

[Fragmented_Datagram]

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...