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Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0?
An anonymous reader wonders: "I had Firefox 1.0PR running smoothly on three different machines and it hardly ever crashed. After upgrading to 1.0, I seem to have at least one annoying crash a day. On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade and left it in a completely unusable state. Eventually, I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again. Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
Why don't you try posting on the Mozilla.org forums?
I've too noticed more crashes - only one of which (out of maybe 9, 10 since release) was related to the auto update; don't rule that out as a primary factor just yet.
I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't had ANY issues with 1.0, perhaps the author of the article is using unsupported plugins / extensions that haven't been upgraded yet?
No bugs found here. But I was sad to see the 'Cookies are delicious delicacies' line disappear from Prefs.
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
Isn't there some kind of firefox mailing list for this kind of stuff?
My PR Firefox version Firefox/0.9.3 has always had the annoying problem of causing the entire system to "lock up" if left running overnight. (Win XP SP2.)
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I'm horrified that this is a front page post. What is wrong w/ you people?
Also, you are reporting the crash data back to the developers, right?
[o]_O
Welcome to Slashdot, now being used as an alternative for official software support sites and usenet newsgroups.
AT&ROFLMAO
Up until now, under windows xp sp2, firefox 1.0 final is running very smoothly, no crashes, im using it all the time.
Under linux also, there are no issues, exept maybe with the mplayer-embedded plugin, but that is the plugins fault actually, experiencing the same problem with epiphany, konqueror and opera. So no, from my point of view firefox is as good as it gets!
pass me those sparticles will ya?!
I don't want to come off as rude (of course but) but, why is this considered newsworthy?
Complaining is more fun than actually solving problems.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I had the opposite occur. With 1.0PR I was having rather regular crashes when I opened the browser, and an annoying one that occured everytime I attempted to open any sort of streaming media. (I resorted to IE to watch the SpaceShip One launch).
However, with the full 1.0 I haven't had a single crash yet, and I've been using it a lot since the first day it was available.
This is not a sig.
No problems whatsoever. The search function finally works and updates are a breeze. On my Windows and Mac machines. HOWEVER, my Linux box was not quite as rosey. I upgraded my source-built FireFox 1.0PR to FireFox 1.0 binary. I unmerged the 1.0PR and downloaded the binary from the FireFox website, installed it, and rebooted. At first, things were smooth sailing, but after an hour or two of usage, FireFox would become unusable and eventually crash. Same problem under SuSE. I uninstalled the binary and emerged FireFox 1.0 from source and everything was great.
"You and your third dimension."
Make sure you uninstall any old versions before installing the new version. Its in the faq.. well hidden, but i've had no problems when uninstalling then re-installing. Make sure to back up, but your savings should be saved as they are not held in the same area as the executeables and whatnot. I have had problems just upgrading, but i've been problemless since i've done the above.
"We are eternal.. all this pain is an illusion." -Maynard James Kenan
Go to CNN. View a few stories. **CRASH**
This is:
Linux 2.6, GNOME, 32-bit ppc, libswf installed,
multiple windows open, Debian-unstable, the tab
preferences extension installed so I can go back
to the old pre-tab Mozilla ways...
This really, really, sucks. I was one of those
people that would keep a browser running for
several weeks at a time. I'd let it sit on one
virtual desktop with two dozen windows open.
Mine seemed to be working but now it's showing an article about a single anonymous user's broswer problems on the front page of Slashdot. That can't be right. Hopefully Mozilla will have a patch available soon.
If you need to mod me down now, but I am starting to get PO'd!
Just what in the F*CK is going on with Slashdot???
Is there any justification what so freakin' ever this is a frontpage story? As far as anyone can tell this is about as informative and useful as 85% of the Usenet.
The quality of frontpage postings has gone down dramatically. After weeks of every story just being a heavily editorialiazed piece of crap, we now have, "Hey, does anyone elses FF 1.0 crash?".
Editors, Taco, Cowboy Neal?!? Is anyone awake here? Have we totally lost our standards?
Cripes.
I was a happy Firefox/Firebird user till 1.0 was released. On WinXP SP2, there are zombie firefox processes even after I close firefox. The reason I switched to FireFox was in the hope that it would be less bloatware. But, I have seen FireFox process eatup more than 75MB of my memory. If it starts leaving zombie processes taking my valuable CPU, what is the advantage of FireFox over any adware/spyware/malware?
To add, Firefox is more hyped than any product M$ has ever launched.
I'll use IE right now(Never had any issues ever actually since sp2). I'll continue to evaluate every new release of FireFox to see if they have removed this major annoyance for me.
I left the lights on in my car the other day and then my car wouldn't start. Could these two events be related? Did anyone else ever have this happen?
word.
Try signing up for an account at PizzaHut.com and go through the first step of ordering a pizza. Crashes FF 1.0 for me every time. Having to open up IE to just to use the site at all is painful.
This is something that instead of being asked here should be asked at the Mozilla Firefox forums. There are lots of people who will be happy to help you.
If you believe you have found a bug, you should search if anyone has reported that bug, and if not report it here.
Sorry, but its almost offensive to see this at slashdot.
Couldn't resist
I've had random crashes browsing MapQuest. It seems around one out of every ten times I refresh a map, Firefox goes boom. I actually suspect it may be some Javascript/Java/DHTML/etc. in an advertisement that's in their rotation.
-Z
You might want to go back to Mozilla then. Oddly enough, I have observed Mozilla being less prone to this kind of behavior than FireFox.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Which is -- no crashes here. :-P
:-/
Maybe you're a victim of some bug that's caused by something else in your system. It sounds strange otherwise, since under normal circumstances, I don't really think 1.0 shouldn't crash "often".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This should be deleted. This is really sorry.
I know you aren't serious about this. At least I hope now, otherwise I'm wasting my time responding to a troll. But you may actually have some truth in what you say.
My first question to ask the original poster would be, "Have you done any OS updates between the two versions?" It would not surprise me in the least if MSFT was busy making patches to interfere with the FireFox application.
You might consider me a troll, but you do have to first recognize the rather extensive number of current lawsuits, convictions, investigations, and other forms of inquiry that Microsoft is currently trying to defend for just this kind of behavior.
Before you accuse the FireFox application of having a problem with Windows you had better prove the Windows doesn't have a problem with FireFox. Based on past performance I would trust FireFox long before I would trust Microsoft.
And you would be better off posting to Mozilla.org instead of trying to effectively FUD the competition against MSIE.
Is this really news? A single user's negative experience of Firefox hardly seems to me to be worth reading - more like a troll instead.This belongs on the Mozilla forums.
Next off, someone will post an article saying that they wish that their graphics card was faster for HL2. Purely subjective information, and not really worth repeating.
I'm running windows and linux builds and it's running flawlessly. Check your settings.
Perhaps in an age of blogging, there's a common tendency in thinking that every single thought that crosses one's mind is worthy of becoming an article. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I'm a gamer on occasion. And when I play an FPS, I don't like frame loss. I recently noticed I was losing frames on occasion. I brought up task manager to see what was doing it, and firefox is using significant CPU power even when it's doing absolutely nothing. (Thus, closing firefox caused a perfect framerate to occur again). Anyone else have this issue? Why does the web browser need CPU to idle?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
My coworker and I just upgraded to 1.0 and have bothed noticed that firefox will eventually eat up most/all system memory, forcing us to kill firefox and restart it. (we ran the beta/pre releases with no issues) The only common factor is that we both had to reinstall the web developer (version .8?) after upgrading to FF1.0....
Could this problem be related to specific extensions and not specifically to firefox itself?
For some reason many times the page is not rendered in a way I can read. the columns in slashdot often overlap, and are really weird. in IE all is fine
yes I do see the irony
well, i had an opposite problem. 0.9 and 1.0PR were crashing all the time, 1.0 is rock solid. i use Mac OS X 10.3.6.
1.0PR had a javascript pop-up crash bug that drove me crazy. 1.0 fixed that.
Some things to consider:
1. How did you install 1.0? Did you do an overwrite? If so, do a clean install.
2. What extensions are you using? Have you disabled the extension version check?
>On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade
When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?
Lastly, to get some real answers from the experts people should asking here.
1) Why is your faith in open source so great that you are unwilling to humor the idea that there is a bug in the application? I am a professional software developer, and most of us LAUGH at the idea of "bug free" applications. It is considered, in some circles, so laughable, that one is considered a bit of a neonate to tout that their software is bug-free [that, or not connected to reality (at least, with respect to the technology)]. The first time I ran Linux (late 90's) I had plenty of core dumps.
/. not Coast to Coast AM.
2) Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run? Additionally, this department is exceptionally good at keeping a secret. So good, in fact, that the only way to detect their work is by running open source (patently bug-free) software on their OS, to uncover these flaws? Given that open source software is bug-free, wouldn't such a department fear discovery when performing such an act?
I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to dislike Microsoft, but goodness, this is
I'll tell you the single source of all of your Microsoft woes... the market. If the market will pump billions of dollars into a company, they have little right to complain about that company's software. There is competition. There was a lot more of it before all of you gave them all of your money. If you dislike Microsoft's product line, then download a Linux or BSD ISO, and install it. If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen. Hit companies that break the law with the law, and if you dislike the lack of competition, then purchase a competing product, or compete with them.
For the first few days I had the system completely freezing reminding me of the bad old days of win 95/98. However for some reason I had a message to run chkdsk and it seems to have fixed itself
The best Firefox so far for me has been 0.9 (if it was even called firefox back then) but any firefox has been better than allowing access to or even using MSIE
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
If CNN isn't working for you, try the Fox News Web site. Not only will you not have to put up with the crashes, but you will get news that is fair and balanced, instead of propaganda that's been filtered through an army of liberal reporters and producers. Honestly, I've introduced at least 8 people to Fox News since the election and they're hooked. I think you would be too if you gave it a try. :)
I thought I had seen it all, but "Firefox crashes because... umm... Microsoft" absolutely takes the cake.
do you leave firefox in a page with flash animations? nowadays many of the animated figures in a web page are flash and not animated gifs anymore. a badly made flash can take up tons of CPU even when you leave it there. also, are you viewing web sites with automatic page refreshing? it will eat up the CPU everytime the page refreshes.
if that bothers you, you can always use the task manager to set the process's priority to either "below normal" or "low".
however, games are memory intensive. so as a browser, which uses memory caching to be fast. when real memory is used up, "thrashing" occurs (to swap some memory pages to the disk). even adjusting task priority won't help here, since thrashing is inherently slow. whenever a web page that you leave in the background refreshes itself, the OS has to swap out a few pages of game memory and swap in memory pages for the browser. as the game continues, it needs the memory back, and the OS has to juggle around memory pages again.
if you see a periodic frame loss, then self-refreshing web pages are definitely the culprit.
I once had a signature.
I know this isn't going to be modded up, but I did want to voice my support for the author of this story. My firefox *never* crashed until the Release Candidate, and now it happens every few days. I used every version starting from 0.3, and never saw a Talkback agent until a week ago. I posted to bugzilla, but didn't have much to say other than "Random crashes in 1.0"
Open source software is not bugfree by any means. But the development time is by orders of magnitude faster than that of closed source development. Combine that with lots of eyes and there are no "easy" bugs left like there often are in closed source offerings.
Most closed source supporters don't even dispute this. Instead they claim that it only works in a very popular project and most projects arent. There is a counter argument to that but I won't go into it. The point is that firefox is an extremely popular project so that argument doesn't refute that the open source development model should yield the ideal result.
Microsoft probably has the worst reputation for stability in the software industry and it is one that is not lacking in actual merit by any account. So this is not exactly random piece of open source software versus random equivelent closed source software.
This is one of the best open source applications with repute for one of the cleanest designs, against the absolute worst repute closed source firm and further a product of theirs with a known terrible design.
"Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run?"
You try to make it sound like he is mel gibson in a Conspiracy Theory. This isn't exactly that, this is a company with a PROVEN track record of doing just that, RECENTLY and doing so IN THE BROWSER MARKET specifically. Read up on the MSN website and the way it renders in Opera.
Further you speak as if your a developer on windows, that means if you've done anything non-trivial you know that windows does NOT behave as documented in NUMEROUS cases. Finding a system call which is only used by one competitor with a significant user base and making an intentional design change to break them is easy enough. If too many people report the problem you can claim it's a bug introduced by the update instead of an intentional change. This would be blatantly obvious if the relevant source were revealed, but it's not.
It's hardly a conspiracy theory at all to believe Microsoft would engage in any illegal anti-competative practices they can which they believe will ultimately preserve more market share than they will cost.
Particually after US CERT advisories to change browsers firefox has become a serious threat to their browser monopoly. I'd venture Microsoft would be willing to risk a substantial number of customers to discredit the stability of the first fully stable release of the first significant threat to their monopoly in almost a decade.
"If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen."
Well, either listen, or engage in anti-competitive practices to ensure you no longer have that option. After all, allowing you the option to choose a competitors product simply because it is superior or you don't them is a bad business strategy! First step is as simple as a minor api change that doesn't affect many applications but that firefox uses. This way you can make some customers feel firefox is unstable. That way you can buy time until you can get DRM'd which use encryption that is only compatible with windows. After all, you've already got the DMCA in place to ensure competition can't beat that simply because they figure out how the encryption works.
Then you don't have to worry about competiton on inexpensive x86 systems anymore.
I've been experiencing the exact same phenomenon. So have a few of my friends. I'm sure it's not happening to everybody, but yeah, for me, the PR seemed more stable. On my system the official release goes to 99% CPU utilization and has to be shut down a few times a day, typically.
It doesn't throw errors to report. I'm not savvy enough to know how to get debugging information out of it, and I don't have the time to spend on mozilla forums trying to get someone's attention and then working it out.
So I won't put in the time. I don't expect the firefox people to fix it for me, given that, of course. They've already given me plenty, and it's still a great browser.
But I have been having this problem, and if other people have, too, then I'm glad to see it being discussed. Beyond hoping the problem becomes well-characterized, I think it's worth having a discussion about this because it could have implications for how OSS is perceived by the mass culture. The Firefox campaign is the biggest, most successful open source push in recent memory. Let's not act like it's heresy to talk about it here instead of in a newsgroup somewhere.
Try uninstalling Firefox 1.0PR, don't worry the profile will be left intact, then install Firefox 1.0, this works just fine, and Firefox 1.0 is completely stable.
I had similar problems back with the last 0.9.whatever release. After I thought about it a bit, I ran Ad-aware and Spybot. BINGO! Three new spywares detected! (I may have gotten a tad over enthusiastic looking for new plug-ins.)
Seems that they expected IE, and bollixed Firefox trying to do their dirty deeds.
Lessons learned:
1) Only accept plugins from known safe sources. (https://update.mozilla.org/extension)
2) Firefox is a great browser, but it ain't idiot proof! (And Even I can be an idiot if I don't think first!) };-)
3) The number of people that'll yell at you when you ask an honest question, instead of offering help, is discouragingly high.
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
It's not just any OS updates. Mozilla and Firefox lockup quite regularly on my Linux system starting very recently. I doubt this particular problem is an M$ conspiracy since I don't do M$ updates to my linux box.
That said, I think the problem lies with the flash plugin more than Firefox. I updated today and the same links that locked Mozilla (and Firefox) before don't do it anymore. Of course, you may have a different problem...
I had this problem previously with a much earlier release of firefox. What I did to fix the problem was back up my bookmarks, go into the application settings hidden folder under the user name you are logged in as, and find the folder for firefox and delete it. Then open the browser again, and the browser will create a new temporary settings folder. Then just restore your bookmarks and you will have it working again without problems. Firefox 1.0 runs great for me.
Firefox 1.0 initially acted like a giant steaming pile... I then blew away my profile from pre 1.0 (saving bookmarks), and started over, and it has been great ever since... Not necessarily what you want to have to do, but I'll accept it since it was technicall 'pre-release' until now.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
uhh, try mozilla 1.7.3 - works fine.
ôó
"I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again."
What, you don't know how to ftp from the prompt?
sig not found
Maybe this is just a poor attempt to generate some "bad" Firefox press.
I smell a rat. Or a troll. Or both.
[*] I don't get the NYT, and I won't accept their privacy policy (thphhht!) so I have no idea if it's already come out.
-- This
...I had a problem when using the auto-updater. But with a few quick Google searches I was able to simply delete a few profile-related files (not my profile itself) which fixed the problem (and the files were recreated automagically by FF). Overall, 1.0 has been much more stable for me than 1.0PR. When I upgraded from 0.9 to 1.0PR, I suddenly started having crashes on an average of 2-3 times a day. Since going to 1.0, I don't think I've had a single crash.
Dude, we're not talking impossible here. I'm typing this from a Linux notebook, and I own only the Microsoft products that came with my equipment.
/. really believed that strongly in the movement, then they would do what I do and run it on their home equipment, and we wouldn't be worried about Windows bugs affecting open source products.
The point of my argument was that it's absolutely annoying to no end to hear people claim that just because a piece of software is open source, it can't be that software's fault. Certainly at some point in ones life, they have to accept the things that they like as "good" without needing to consider it "flawless."
I am an open source advocate, but I feel that making laughable claims in support of open source software is no way to promote it. How about, before we go pointing fingers, we take a quick look at the problem, and then prove that it's Microsoft's fault.
If open source software were naturally bug-free, nobody would be running software to track those bugs. If everyone in open source were a developer, there would be many more developers here.
If everyone on
First off, I'd like to say that I was the poster of this message. I chose to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons... one of which is that it's more entertaining reading flaming responses here than in my email. :)
One thing I must note, this message wasn't a plea for help (as most of you assumed). If you read the last line, the one containing the question, carefully, you'll see that I wanted to hear about others' experiences. Looking through the responses, I definitely did get some good feedback. My main concern (which this thread validated) is that Firefox is pitched as a easy to use, leaner, more secure browser when compared to IE. However, when you upgrade the browser, things inevitably get screwed up (weird things in profile, plugins, extensions, etc...). The easy solution would be to uninstall previous instances of Firefox before installing the upgrade, something that is never recommended as you go through the upgrade process.
I find this whole thing especially frustrating because I convinced many people (non-tech people) to start using Firefox while it was still in pre release. Now, some of those people have upgraded to the final release (or have tried too) and are cursing the thing out. Was I wrong to get ordinary users to start using a pre-release version of a great browser??? possibly, but the guys releasing this thing should realize that they're targetting the masses now. And the masses are fairly dumb and quick to reject new things. I'd hate to see this huge launch campaign backfire because ordinary users aren't "sophisticated enough".
And I post this to slashdot instead of Mozillazine for another reason. These sorts of usability issues plague open source.... developers not understanding ordinary users and ordinary users running back to their M$ crap. Proprietary software has one huge advantage over open source, it's marketed and sold by dumb ordinary users.
I would recommend Firefox only if you have a need for 100% free software with source code and the whole shebang. But every time I tried to install and use a Mozilla based browser, I was left disappointed. Opera is definitely worth paying for.
Disclaimer: I am NOT in any way affiliated with the cool folks who make either of these browsers.
You'll probably want to uninstall the 1.0pr release before you install 1.0. Matter of fact, it's not a bad idea to do that to anything you intend to upgrade. I know it's definately save me some headaches and $$$ on aspirin.
Great post! But is it a pun or a grammatical error?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
All you people get real. Firefox 1.0 on Windows XP SP2 is perfectly sta
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I don't understand that inquirer letter:
The fact is that Firefox only cuts the mustard as a modern browser because of its extensions (...
Without these missing extensions (for example one called autohide which facilitates kiosk browsing), Firefox is, in my opinion, a long way behind some of the IE-based browser
Is he saying Firefox doesn't have these "missing" extensions? Or that he doesn't know how to install them? Or is he saying "if I refuse to install any of the functionality of Firefox, it doesn't have much functionality"?
Don't want to lose your growing Firefox database when you upgrade?
On Windows machines you can use a utility to backup your profile called, MozBackup. Test it out a few times and then try upgrading.
Saves your backup to another file and can import that backup into another installation. Let's you take your passwords and all that with you.
Get your Unix fortune now!
A few years ago, when Phoenix was first released, I was among the first to try it. Pleased by its relative stability, speed and overall lightweight character, I started using it as my primary browser. Later releases brought further improvements, like extensions. Fast forward to 2004:
Improvements:
- Auto-update
- Improved search
- Skin
- Download manager
Side-effects:
- Firefox is very unstable compared to Phoenix
- The development team has started linking Firefox against glibc 2.3
The improvements are of little to no benefit IMHO:
- Auto-update is too unreliable and impractical when you're not root. It's actually quicker to do it the old-fashioned way
- Being a slightly conservative bastard who can't appreciate eye candy if it isn't female, I've never used skins.
- The improved search is an exception. The colours are handy if you're visually scanning a large document and it eliminates the window blocking your view. It's actually a bit like vim's search.
- The download manager is not very practical. It gives clueless lusers a harder time infecting their PC's, but it's "hidden" into the browser and the actions surrounding a download take more time now than ever before.
The decay which has been accompanying all this development is quite severe:
- The stability issues cause two crashes on an average day for me. Some sites actually cause crashes whenever viewed. In most cases the sites contain buggy html and javacrypt, but that should not crash the browser. Notable examples include WebCT and requested popups.
- Although most modern distros use glibc 2.3, I'm not going to switch for a while.
I've tried setting up a chroot for it, but the latest version of gcc appears to be unable to compilethe latest glibc.
According to the gcc maintainers this is a bug in glibc.
According to the glibc maintainers this is a bug in gcc.
blah rant rave curse slap stab blam, etc
Even though there's a hack to get it working, I'm staying with glibc 2.2 until both groups have stopped trying to break eachother's code.
But there's always PLAN B. And after three hours of compiling firefox 1.0, it turns out that the degradation curve since 0.8 has not changed course.
Some common sense inhibitor snaps in my skull and I ditch firefox. Alternatives:
Konqueror toy
Dillo incomplete
Links rules my console, but it has some
inherent disabilities
etcetcetc.
But there's always the "dead" Mozilla. It turns out that Mozilla is not as dead as commonly thought.
Mozilla has become much lighter nowadays. The e-mail, news and chat is seperated from the browser package now and doesn't swallow memory anymore and it's noticeably faster than before.
It can also use extensions, block popups and evil javascript code, and some other features we've started to like about Firefox. Among the differences are a more intuitive download manager and unfortunately the old text search. But the most important differences are its much greater stability and the fact that it is backwards compatible with glibc 2.2 and possibly even older versions.
So, contrary to the mainstream momentum, I've switched back to Mozilla. Getting it working took a few mouseclicks instead of a full compile and minutes instead of hours. I live happily ever after.
If you're having nervous breakdowns with firefox, consider this move.
Steven.
"if the Firefox authors don't deem their product worthy of a 1.0 release, then we must assume that their product isn't ready yet"
In their eyes yes. Perhaps the authors have a bit higher standards of "ready" than their competitors? Internet Explorer has been in development for how long? From the very first release of IE to the release of sp2 is how long it took Microsoft to develop a program of the stability, security, and function set IE has today. Version numbers, or the number of releases or whether those releases were labeled preview or stable is meaningless.
The fact of the matter is that in 2 years the mozilla foundation has using an open source process developed and released a browser with a comparable feature set (arguably a superior one), comparable stability, and superior security. They've done all this without adding any features that break standards compliance, and yet HAVE added great features which IE is lacking, such as popup blocking, transparent png, and tabbed browsing. There is a multi-search bar. There are several annoying javascript functions which you can disable. There is an interface through which almost all critical default settings and behaviors are accesible to the user and can be directly manipulated. The browser they've released weighs in at under 5mb and is completely self contained, it can operate out of a folder. This browser runs on a plethora of platforms which IE is incapable of running on.
It's taken MS over 10yrs to develop a browser which is inferior to what the mozilla foundation developed in 2yrs. You can talk about "stable" releases and version numbers all day sir. But you'll never convince me that achieving a result in 2yrs isn't faster than achieving less or even the same results in 10.