Firefox Deer Park Alpha Available

The Mozilla folks have made available the newest release of the Firefox web browser. This release is for testers and developers only, and should not be used if you have no interest in trying out the latest build. The release notes cover the recent changes. From the what's new document: "Fast back (and forward) - This very experimental feature allows much faster session history navigation. The feature is off by default but can be enabled for testing purposes by setting the browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers preference to a nonzero number."

Comments

burning edge says:

[professorhojo]

According to Burning Edge, there are numerous usability regressions since 1.0 on the trunk builds.

I think they need a lot of time to iron things out and this is one of those things they've decided to prolong the process!

Since Fx is a hugely successful project that is still unusual in its open-source nature, the fact that more alphas and betas and in-betweens are being released may be a good thing.

Re:burning edge says:

[Anonymous Coward]

For crying out load, it'a an ALPHA build. And it's almost 1 year younger than the previous release (Firefox1.0 used a branch of the main development tree).

Changes

[Hank Chinaski]

Notable bug fixes

* Web page rendering and interaction
o 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.
o 238493 - Ads on Gamespot flicker into other parts of the page during page load.
o 95227 - Make it possible to set different default font type (serif vs sans serif) for different languages.
o 47350 - Current scroll position not retained, reloading or going back to multipart/x-mixed-replace (e.g. Bugzilla bug lists).
o 56314 - Reverse selection colors when page background is similar to default selection background.
o 274553 - Blocking iframes either via an extension or userchrome.css breaks find toolbar search.
o 103638 - Targets with same name in different windows open in wrong window with javascript.
o 62384 - Text Zoom doesn't change dropdown height (without reload).
o 97283 - Mouse wheel scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
o 251986 - Keyboard scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
o 209020 - Meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" broken if midas was ever used in that browser window.
o 198155 - Midas html editing mode persists after leaving the page that enabled it.
o 21616 - Space after ::first-letter pseudo-element line is larger than between other lines (improvement in first-letter drop-caps appearance?).
o 273785 - Plugins not scanned/detected on startup (empty plug-ins dialog in downloads, open-with dialog for PDFs).
o 76197 - Scrollbars should look disabled when there's nowhere to scroll (not yet fixed on Mac).
o 151375 - Focus outline should be drawn outside of element.
o 133165 - Focus outline should include larger descendants of inline elements.
o 65917 - :active neither hierarchical nor picky about what can be activated.
o 20022 - :hover state not set until mouse move.
o 278531 - Generic request prioritization (loadgroup prioritization) (e.g. for each HTTP host, load images with lower priority than pages).
* Improved error pages. To enable error pages, go to about:config and set browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true.
o 157004 - Error pages should be stored in history and show the original URL in the address bar.
o 237244 - "Try Again" on XUL error pages does not repost form data.
* Downloads
o 239006 - Download manager doesn't account for filesize when presenting combined percentages.
o 245829 - Download manager progress and title do not update correctly, wrong number of files and percentage after finishing or cancelling a download.
o 249677 - Cancel does not delete temporary file in helper app dialog, if default action is save.
* Accessibility
o 175893 - Make XUL 's focusable.
o 162081 - Wrong letter is underlined as accesskey / mnemonic when widget direction is RTL.
o Many keyboard accessibility fixes.
o Many screen-reader accessibility fixes.
* Speed and memory-use improvements
o 227361 - Don't reflow documents in background tabs until window resizing is complete.
o 131456 - Memory use does not go down after closing tabs.
o Many other speed and memory-use improvements.
* Windows-specific bugs
o 16940 - [Windows] IME is now disabled for password fields.
o 255123 - [Windows] Opening URL from another app focuses an existing window before opening a new window.
o 171349 - [Win98] Firefox icon is Win98's standard icon (taskbar & upper lefthand corner of app).
o 284716 - [Win2k/WinXP] Create DDBs in nsImageWin::Optimize. (Fixes several performance bugs with large images, such as slow scrolli

Re:Changes

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

on most web pages i often increase the font size using Ctrl+ and the main text area usually gets squished by collums on the sides. i would like the article content (the stuff that matters) of pages to widen when the text gets bigger, and not be confined by a certain width no matter what.

Re:Changes

[Issue9mm]

That's not necessarily something that should be fixed at the browser level. From a coding perspective, I've gotten into the habit of specifying horizontal margins and padding in ems, which is a relative unit of measure (horizontal) based on font size. Because of that, a simple document can scale perfectly regardless of text size.

If I specify a column's boundary at 150px, it isn't the browser's job to correct for it, other than to wrap the text when it gets too big.

Long story short, your complaint is with web designers, not with Firefox.

-9mm-

Re:Changes

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

i had the feeling that web page designers were not making their pages flexible enough to work with FF's text enlarging. (i must be getting old; need the large font to read comfortably, damn!). though it would be nice to somehow be able to force margins wider....

Re:Changes

[n0-0p]

Opera style "page zoom" should be possible in 1.5, so you may eventually get your wish anyway. It's just not really practical with the current rendering engine.

Re:Changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you just run into badly designed pages. I have perfect sight on both eyes, and run with a small font. No problem on normal pages. But some designers have their font set to bigger than what they like, and instead of fixing their own settings they set the font side of the page. If they hard code it to 8 pixels, no problem, as I will see it at 8 pixels too. But when they have their own font set to 12 pixels, another way of getting it to display at 8 pixels is to specify "4 pixels smaller than settings" (x-small or something like that). That works fine on their own machine, but if someone try to view the page who already have his font set to 8 pixels, 4 pixels smaller is four pixels. And nobody can read a four pixel font, for something like E you need at least five pixels vertically (upper line, one pixel distance, center line, one pixel distance, lower line).

Re:Changes

[mdew]

I'm looking forward to all the CSS3, SVG and Canvas bits, so nice :) now if only we can get acid2 compliance....

Re:Changes

[Breakfast Pants]

Quick, crappy, hack to get around it. Install the imagezoom extension and if there is a picture in the table that holds the article you can zoom it to some giant amount and 9 times out of 10 it stretches the table in the desired way. The rest of the time it stretches it in a way that the text goes under the sidebars and gets garbled. I use it on Penny-arcade all the time, just zoom the "news - click here for comments" gif and you are on your way to unstrained eyes.

Re:Changes

[jawtheshark]

Ctrl +

And I would like that such shortcuts would be thought of a bit: not everyone uses an US keyboard and Ctrl + doesn't work for mine, because it ends up being Ctrl Shift +, which Firefox doesn't understand.

I've been looking for an extention to add two icons in the icon bar: one for enlarging font size and one for reducing font size. A bit like in the Mac Mail.app.

Re:Changes

[bunnyman]

Just so you know, ems are actually vertical units. /* ems, the height of the element's font */

Re:Changes

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

It's not just you; for some reason some designers feel that a 8 or 9 pixel font size "looks better", to hell with readability. One good solution is to go into Firefox's Fonts and Colors menu and set a minimum font size (I generally use 10).

Re:Changes

[belg4mit]

Not exactly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

The W3 used to refer to it in the traditional sense.
Think about it, what would be the point of ex then?

Re:Changes

[Issue9mm]

Yes and no, but officially you're probably right, and I knew that. What I was attempting to say, and got caught up in the saying of it, was that when used for horizontal proportion, your pages scale perfectly no matter what size they're set to.

-9mm-

Re:Changes

[linuxci]

Here's the official roadmap of Mozilla apps.

Well it's the blog of the guy that does the roadmap anyway, it'll appear on the official roadmap pages soon.

Re:Changes

[Dave2 Wickham]

You could try installing Aardvark, and using "de-widthify" to see if that works.

Re:Changes

[niittyniemi]

> Just so you know, ems are actually vertical units.

You're wrong. ems are a horizontal unit: the length of an m in the current font.

exs on the other hand are a vertical unit (height of an x).

You can use ems for height but "it's not done". Both come from typography.

Re:Changes

[erunaheru]

If someone says "make this 1 in.", the whole point is that the browser will do exactly that. It would be incredibly stupid if firefox, which kind of prides itself on compliance, failed to do that. using ems circumvents the problem. maybe you should understand what someones talking before you start flaming them.

Re:Changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Using some bookmarklets can help.

Try "zoom layout" to increase the size of fixed elements or "zap style sheets".

"linearize" and "printer friendly" can help in reading text also.

Re:Changes

[satanami69]

You might also like textzoom.

http://www.cosmicat.com/extensions/textzoom/

Re:Changes

[jseale]

Damn! That's a shitload of bugs. I sure haven't seen THAT many here using 1.0.4. Have you installed the Greasemonkey plug-in or something?

good to see

[teh_mykel]

keep the progress up :) its good to see mozilla are open to change, and are willing to impliment useful features as asked. its nice to have a company respond to the individuals for once.

Opera

[Digital Warfare]

Its seems to me as though Firefox are taking Opera as their lead example.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

What ignoramus modded this flamebait? Obviously someone who's not the least familiar with Opera, cause it's blatantly obvious that this "experimental" fast back Firefox feature is jacked straight out of Opera.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with half of the other features found in Firefox. Atleast give credit where credit is due.

Re:fp

[miasmic]

I hope it lets you fast forward to some better posts than this one!

Yay!

[Silverlancer]

Bug Fixes
...
o 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.

FINALLY! Slashdot renders correctly. But doesn't this mean we can't make any jokes about Firefox and Slashdot anymore?

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait for the next version of IE when Microsoft trys to reinvent the wheel

Re:Yay!

[millwall]

Bug Fixes
...
o 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.

I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?

Re:Yay!

[linuxci]

I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?

Although Slashdot's HTML is old and bloated by modern standards this was actually a bug in the Firefox renderer. Although I'd like to see Slashdot clean up their HTML in the future this time it wasn't their fault.

This bug was actually fixed before Firefox 1.0 was relased but they pulled the fix from 1.0 as it caused some regressions, lucky that they got ironed out.

Re:Yay!

[petermgreen]

whilst slashcodes html is pretty damn horrid this was definately a bug in firefox.

iirc firefox could render the page fine if it did so all at once but sometimes fucked it up when rendering incrementally.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?

Are you fucking kidding me? EVERY TIME Firefox gets mentioned on Slashdot this comes up. And EVERY TIME, a FUCKING MORON like you says this.

It's a bug in Firefox.

What, the valid HTML testcase attached to the Bugzilla entry isn't enough? The FIREFOX DEVELOPERS saying it's a bug in Firefox isn't enough? The fact that the next version of Firefox will fix it isn't enough?

What will it take for you fucking fanboys to realise that YES, YOUR PRECIOUS FIREFOX HAS A BUG?!?

I started pointing this out in a reasonable manner last year. I get slightly louder and more aggressive each time I post this. I don't tolerate idiot fanboys. Nobody should.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

A previous rant of mine. It's not sinking in, is it?

What is it going to take to convince people that it's a bug in Firefox?

Obviously, nothing will convince some idiots. Idiocy is very persistent.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, cowboy!

Re:Yay!

[Speare]

I haven't yet tried it-- is the fix just a reload/re-layout after the page is done loading? Or is it more of an actual fix?

I noticed that phpBB forum sites often have the same issue for their right column. A real fix should notice the problem during layout and rework the layout assumptions that are proven false as it goes.

Re:Yay!

[linuxci]

I think the fix addresses the root of the problem, check with these forum sites and see if they now display correctly too. If they don't then it's a good opportunity to try out the new reporter tool in Firefox.

It's in the Help menu under Report Broken Website

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a good post, to which I am replying as a means of demonstrating my approval

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm sure it's a problem with slashcode. Firefox has no bugs. Slashdot fanboy.

Re:Yay!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Speaking of which, as long as Slashdot blocks validator.w3.org (you get a 403 Forbidden), the "Report Broken Website" feature should refuse to report problems with rendering Slashdot.

If you try to hide your bugs, don't expect help when other's bugs bite you.

Re:Yay!

[BrowserCapsGuy]

I had no problems validating this page via http://validator.w3.org/check. It reported 166 errors on this page.

Re:Yay!

[BrowserCapsGuy]

I was using the WebDeveloper toolbar extension for Firefox and despite being called a lier [sic] I stand by what I wrote.

Re:Yay!

[mr3038]

Although Slashdot's HTML is old and bloated by modern standards this was actually a bug in the Firefox renderer.

Yes. It's in fact the bug #217527. The actual bug is a combination of table layout and javascript layout trickery. Slashdot was almost the only place to hit it.

The issue is hit with the following code:
<TABLE CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" BORDER="0">
<TR>
<TD width="1" bgcolor="yellow">
<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ALIGN="LEFT">
<TR>
<TD>
xxx
<script type="text/javascript">var foo = document.body.offsetHeight;</script>
zzzzzzzz
</TD>
<TD></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

The reason is that querying document.body.offsetHeight while the page is still loading caused element dimensions to be computed from partial page source. The results were then incorrectly cached and used later instead of recalculating the values once the page was completely loaded. In the example above, this causes the "zzzzzzz" part to fall out of table cell that is sized to fit only the width of "xxx". If the document.body.offsetHeight is not embedded inside the table or it's used only after the document has been fully loaded the bug can be avoided.

Firefox 1.1

[bcmm]

For the record, Deer Park is not the next minor point release (1.05 is guess), but the line that will be officially released as Firefox 1.1

Re:Firefox 1.1

[jesterzog]

Deer Park is not the next minor point release (1.05 is guess), but the line that will be officially released as Firefox 1.1

Does this then mean that Deer Park should also have the binary diff update feature? (Though presumably not supported with actual updates.)

Re:Firefox 1.1

[linuxci]

Not sure that is fully implemented yet (as there's no easy way to test) but this feature will be in for 1.1 so making updates a lot smaller and easier (not that the full download updates were that big anyway)

Re:Firefox 1.1

[bsharitt]

Was 1.1 going to fix the Mac version so it actually looks and behaves like a Mac application, or is that going to have to wait until 2.0?

Re:Firefox 1.1

[mdew]

I was thinking how they would implement such a feature, considering theres numerious "optimised" compiled binaries, so each firefox binary will be different (apart from the official mozilla.org release).. how would you make a binary diff against the unofficial packages? is it possible?

Re:Firefox 1.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there's only one official build for each platform. All they have to do is query the server with a checksum of the binary currently in use, and if it doesn't match the official build, they can send the whole thing down the line or redirect or something.

Re:Firefox 1.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think it does that. On windows the preference dialog box looks like a mac preference dialog box. Icons along the top instead of the side. So they may be doing that work still.

Re:Firefox 1.1

[pizen]

Have you tried Mozilla's Camino browser yet?

Re:Firefox 1.1

[Mercano]

No, Deer Park is 1.1, unless things like built-in SVG rendering and the new options window got bumped up to the 1.0x line.

Re:Firefox 1.1

[bcmm]

For the benefit of people without Macs, how does it differ?


(And why are all Mac screenshots of anything scaled down from the original resolution so we can't tell without asking you?)

Re:Firefox 1.1

[bsharitt]

Yes, but the advantage of Firefox is the extensions and stuff. Camino has no feature that make it better than Safari.

Re:Firefox 1.1

[bsharitt]

It's basically the same problem as using a Java program on Windows. It just feels out of place, and often doesn't behave like most normal Mac applications. For instance, the text boxes are non standard, so not only do they look different, but things such as Mac OS X's built in spell checking doesn't work like it does in Safari, and most native OS X application that use the standard method for drawing text boxes. And other items, such as radio buttons, check boxes, buttons and drop down menus look more like they would in a Windows application than they would in a Mac application. For the most part, it's just a poor Mac application.

Extensions

[johansalk]

I'm often late on adopting firefox new releases and the reason is simply that extensions often need time to be updated by their authors. I wish the Mozilla foundation would somehow remedy this problem in the future, so updating the browser need not break extensions.

Re:Extensions

[Hank Chinaski]

this is a alpha released. it is targeted at extension and theme developers so that end users have all their favorites available ones the final product is published.

Re:Extensions

[MynockGuano]

Perhaps they should put out a sort of "alpha release". This release would be basically a semi-official in-development build for "testing purposes only" on which extension authors and developers can "test" their code to see if there are any problems. This way, they will have time to prepare their extensions before the next release. Furthermore, to avoid confusion and prevent everyone from jumping on an unstable product and generating negative publicity, it would probably be best not to brand it with the Firefox name; maybe they could just use whatever the current code-name happens to be (like, for example, "Deer Park", a random name that I just happened to come up with).

Re:Extensions

[Timesprout]

Mock away but a lot of people find it more that a little stupid that just about every new Firefox release, however minor breaks existing extensions. Its really not a very clever way to treat an extension interface.

Re:Extensions

[bmongar]

I think Deer Park is an awful name. Mostly because is reminds me of a town/filling station half way between Jefferson City, Mo, and Columbia Mo. That filling station had a 'deliverance' feel to it for sure.

Re:Extensions

[I confirm I'm not a]

a lot of people find it more that a little stupid that just about every new Firefox release, however minor breaks existing extensions

I've not really noticed this since the change to (I think) 1.0. Same with themes (thank $DEITY). Which extensions have you had problems with?

Re:Extensions

[MynockGuano]

I was just teasing; no offense intended to the original poster. I was just pointing out that this is exactly the situation that this release is meant to address in a way that I hoped would make an impression. I apologize for any offense taken.

Re:Extensions

[n0-0p]

The issue is that the interfaces aren't completely solidified. For instance, plugging some of the Javascript security issues in 1.0.2 required breaking several extensions that relied on those interfaces. The devs have said that the extension versioning will become less of an issue once the existing interfaces have been locked. Unfortuneately there's still quite a bit of active development in that area.

It's either this approach, or the backwards compatability at all costs mantra that made Microsoft a target for years. One must accept some compromises. Though I thought the sarcasm was a bit heavy too.

Re:Extensions

[grondu]

To find out which extensions work with Deer Park, see this thread http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2618 38&sid=4891a0206fd86585b9309b74d381035e.

Re:Extensions

[spectre_240sx]

A lot of the people that have that annoyance have been using the browser before it was 1.0. Before that time, expect things to change. What's so hard about that concept?

Re:Extensions

[EpsCylonB]

All of them, a new version seems to disable all extensions whether they work with that version or not. Most of the time I end up having to reinstall the extension, time comsuming if you have a lot of them.

Re:Extensions

[kingduct]

I have decided that the major thing that Firefox needs at this point is for the extension manager to be like synaptic and for extensions (and themes I guess) to be like deb packages (and for there to be people like the Debian people who judge and approve the extensions so that only stable ones are allowed, at least via some sort of default extensions server, other people could set up an unstable server). It would make the whole extensions system a ton easier and would mean that firefox could remain minimalist, but at the same time easily offer powerful features. The manager (like Synaptic) should have checkboxes beside each package to install a bunch at a time, and should also have an export/import list of installed packages so that one could have a simple text file with a list of all installed extensions and take it to another computer to automatically download them. It seems like the main work would be in the testing of packages, because the actual interface could be handled by the browser engine itself. At that point, Firefox would clearly defeat Opera except on old computers.

Re:Extensions

[I confirm I'm not a]

If I get a chance I'll confirm this tonight, but I'd say that's a problem (well, obviously it's a problem, I mean it's a problem for you individually ;-)

I've not had *all* extensions crap out at upgrade for a while - though Firefox usually goes through the checking for updates process after an upgrade. I can't remember any extension failing since around 1.0.

Just a thought, but what OS? My experience mainly relates to Firefox on Windows; my home (Gentoo) box doesn't get hammered with extensions nearly so much, and I've recently switched from mozilla-firefox to mozilla-firefox-bin, so missed an upgrade from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4.

Re:Extensions

[fbjon]

But Opera already has all that stuff, without using extensions??

Re:Extensions

[Jedbro]

That is exactly what this release is for.
"testers and developers (a.k.a Web authors and extension developers) only".

This is only alpha 1, there will be an alpha 2, beta and a few RC's... so yes, this is exactly what you are asking for and more.

Re:Extensions

[jals]

Sarchasm - 1. (n.) The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

a little slow on the uptake, huh bub?

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

But Opera already has all that stuff, without using extensions??

(a) Opera has a Greasemonkey? And a Bugmenot? And a Flashblock? And an EditCSS? All built in? First I'd heard of it. But Firefox lets me have all those if I want them, without forcing my grandma to wonder what the hell all those funny icons options are for.

(b) Opera either costs money or shows ads. Firefox does neither.

(c) Opera has fuck all to do with this whole subject. You like it? Great. Go pimp it somewhere appropriate. Firefox discussions aren't.

Re:Extensions

[johansalk]

My experience with mozilla's alphas, and many other mature open source apps alphas, is that they tend to be pretty stable, certainly far more stable than many closed apps. I just wish it had been possible for the extension and themes to not be broken by minor update versions... Mozilla/firefox is perhaps the only app I can readily think of in which this is the case.

Re:Extensions

[zepmaid]

I apologize for any offense taken
Dude!! This is slashdot. You don't apologise here. Instead, you should flame and ask the guy to STFU.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the name is a buddhist reference.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

MORON.

Re:Extensions

[jp10558]

I'd say that's a good idea, except it seems like implementing part of an OS for a browser... Wouldn't that likely add megabytes of code, and certainly constitute "bloat"?

I will say the hassle of extensions, especially the possibility of them breaking in a point release (sadly still there according to users on this thread in 1.0+) has kept me paying for Opera.

Re:Extensions

[jp10558]

Usually I wouldn't reply to an Anonymous Coward, but here we go.

(a)Userjs, more powerful than Greasemonky. Bugmenot I've got right now, had for a year - it's just a bookmarklet, I'm suprised you'd need an extension for it. EditCSS? Not sure what that does, but you can edit the source in your favorite editor and then refresh from cache.

(b)True. Not relevant in a discussion of features. Sort of relevent in UI, but OMFG - like MS, they expect you to PAY for software. Guess what, most people do, for most software - especially if it is good.

(c)Opera was brought up because of the parent poster.

Re:Extensions

[egghat]

Yes, but this may be one of the consequences of the design decision to create a small, extensible core with a lot of extensions. This often leads to release and quality assurance nightmares for the maintainers and upgrade nightmares for the users.

I'd suggest a policy like Google, that when 80 percent of the user base installs an extension it becomes part of the core and no release should be done without that extension.

Bye egghat.

Re:Extensions

[jesser]

1.0.4 was a minor update. 1.1 will not be.

Will copying work *all* the time now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance the god damned clipboard bug is fixed yet?

Re:Will copying work *all* the time now?

[zebs]

So its not just my computer then???

Thank god for that! Its been driving me mad

Re:Will copying work *all* the time now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the slow clipboard loading problem? I've noticed if I copy text in firefox and immediately switch over to another app and paste (or another firefox window) the copy to clipboard never happened, however if I pause a second or half-second it takes.

New browser features

[darteaga]

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/deerpark/new-brows er-features.html

Re:New browser features

[toadnine]

Not bad. 3 out of 6 new features are copied from Opera. "Sanitize" vs. "Delete private data" "Fast back (and Forward)" vs. "Rewind" and "Fast Forward" "Report a broken website wizard" vs. "Help -> Report a site problem"

Re:New browser features

[linuxci]

Not bad. 3 out of 6 new features are copied from Opera

So what? Some people prefer the Opera UI and will use that as their default browser, others prefer the way Firefox is designed. What's wrong with copying the best features off other browsers? There's not one browser fits all.

I think Firefox is better designed for users that want a relatively simple interface whereas Opera comes packed with just about everything but the kitchen sink (it'll be in version 9.0).

So to me Firefox and Opera appeal to different people. They both support standards and provide competition to the browser world so I like to see both grow.

Re:New browser features

[MynockGuano]

Unregrettably, Opera's ad-spam feature wasn't quite able to make it for this release.

Re:New browser features

[Lussarn]

It's a god damn mystery why opera has close to zero marketshare and Firefox has 5% when according to some opera fanbois all features of every browser is copied from opera. So where is opera lacking? Why isn't marketshare larger? Maybe you should ask yourself that question instead of picking on successfull browsers such as Firefox.

Re:New browser features

[mancontr]

There's a plug-in for that...

Re:New browser features

[fbjon]

Because most people are cheapskates.

Firefox is an IE-replacer, that's what it's really good at. It fits in the same slot, so to speak. Opera is more of a full suite for using the internet.

On a tangent, can someone tell me why display:inline-block isn't supported by Firefox? It seems it used to be in Mozilla... Hell, even IE gets it right! I'm forced to make a compatibility-css file as it is now. :(

Re:New browser features

[fbjon]

Marketing, probably. Commodore fell in the same hole. Back when I started with Opera 6, it was such an incredible thing compared to those netscapes 4.7 (brrr!). Right now the difference is much smaller, with Firefox catching up big time.

Just because an app is better made (still), doesn't mean it translates to marketshare. What I've been wondering is, what would happen if Opera 8.1 incorporated support for Firefox extensions? Mayhem!

Re:New browser features

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Opera has ads (can be removed if you pay $30) and FireFox has not. That's the only reason..

Re:New browser features

[loconet]

"Image thumbnails as tab icons
When viewing images, tab icons now display thumbnails of the displayed image."

I hope this can be disabled else a lot of /.'ers, who use a new tab to hide *indecent* images, are going to get in trouble.

Re:New browser features

[generic-man]

In my experience as a registered Opera user, Opera has lots of features and is very compact, but crashes more often than Firefox does. Granted, Opera can recover from crashes by saving its state -- something I wish Firefox can do -- but I'd rather it not crash quite so much.

Firefox is fairly stable, more so than most of the alternative browsers I've tried. It still leaks memory, but you can afford to restart your web browser every day or so.

Re:New browser features

[maxwell demon]

Opera comes packed with just about everything but the kitchen sink (it'll be in version 9.0).

You mean version 9.0 will incorporate Emacs?

Re:New browser features

[_xeno_]

Why do I use Firefox over Opera? Extensions.

Firefox has a really, really cool extension mechanism. The simple JavaScript and XUL API (compared to, say, writing C plugins) makes writing extensions really easy. Once you figure out how to use XPCOM, you have a lot of power available.

I've gone looking (briefly) for ways to extend Opera and have found nothing. This is my personal reason for not using Opera. I like my extensions, even if some of them are of extremely limited use.

Re:New browser features

[cortana]

File a bug.

Re:New browser features

[Taladar]

Actually pretty much all firefox extensions that don't copy some opera feature (including the ones without GUI, see this site) are useless.

Re:New browser features

[fbjon]

It's been filed ages ago, and will be implemented "in the future".

Re:New browser features

[fbjon]

Well, almost. Easier adblocking would be one thing, the filter.ini is a bit clunky to update. And editing the CSS and viewing the results in realtime would be great. I know it's possible with the html, though.

Ablocking is an interesting issue however. Imagine if Firefox gets more than 50% market share, and all of them block ads.

Re:New browser features

[ziggy_zero]

SessionSaver for Firefox

Re:New browser features

[Val314]

i tried Opera (my university gave out free Opera 7 & 8 Reg Keys some time ago) and just cant stand their GUI. It just looks and feels wrong.

Re:New browser features

[ArcticFlood]

Session saver has an option to save and restore sessions on crashes.

Re:New browser features

[bogie]

" Because most people are cheapskates."

Why are they cheapskates? Because they don't want to pay for what is freely available? Why would anyone pay for something when a Free alternative that is as good or better is available?

"Firefox is an IE-replacer, that's what it's really good at. It fits in the same slot, so to speak. "

Its really good at, freeing up your taskbar real estate, monitoring RSS feeds, blocking popups, making your computer safer from spyware, and freeing you to take back the web(ablock,greasemonkey). THAT'S why people use Firefox. Beyond being a web browser that displays HTML and has back,forward, and print buttons it hardly fits "in the same slot". If Firefox is an easier drop-in then Opera for users then Opera needs to reconisder why it can't do the same.

We all have our biases(obviously) but your post seems more about daming with faint praise as opposed to truly trying to explaing why Firefox/*zilla is at 10% why Opera is holding steady at less than 1%. On many tech sites Firefox has displaced IE as the browser in majority. Why isn't the same said for Opera?

Re:New browser features

[tritonic]

I find opera lacks one particular feature of firefox:

- Is open source and free

Re:New browser features

[CargoCultCoder]

It's a god damn mystery why opera has close to zero marketshare and Firefox has 5% when according to some opera fanbois all features of every browser is copied from opera. So where is opera lacking? Why isn't marketshare larger?

Where have you been? The answer is guaranteed to appear around here at least once a week. Let me summarize the usual explanations for you.

• Opera isn't Open Source, therefore it's crap.
• Opera isn't free, therefore it's crap.
• Opera isn't (MS-abused) Netscape reborn, so it gets far fewer sympathy-downloads.

In other words, Firefox has a lot more appeal on some kind of emotional level to a number of geeks, though it may not be technologically superior to all of its competition.

Maybe you should ask yourself that question instead of picking on successfull browsers such as Firefox.

I don't see much picking on Firefox, just observations that other browsers, like Opera, have offered the same "new" features for years. Don't blame Opera users for being acutely aware of that.

Re:New browser features

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has to do with the focus of the projects. Firefox (at least its initial envisioning) is supposed to be a small fast replacement for IE. Opera has more built in features and intergration. Think of it as the difference between a minivan which is pretty basic and gets the job done and a luxury car with more features but in the end still gets the job done.

Personally I dislike firefox and use exclusivly Opera. Even converted the rest of my family to it and quite a few people at work. It runs perfectly fine for me and I've had maybe 1 crash since opera 8 came out.

Re:New browser features

[arkanes]

While on the other hand, Firefox/Mozilla has had JavaScript that worked for years, and a standard compliant DOM model, and better CSS support, and a useable plugin model, etc, etc. Opera is a nice browser, but it's not like it's objectively superior to Firefox. Basic functionality, as opposed to cute UI tricks, has been present in Mozilla for a really long time, whereas Opera didn't even get a usefull JS engine until version 7.

Re:New browser features

[toddestan]

"Firefox is an IE-replacer, that's what it's really good at. It fits in the same slot, so to speak. "

Its really good at, freeing up your taskbar real estate, monitoring RSS feeds, blocking popups, making your computer safer from spyware, and freeing you to take back the web(ablock,greasemonkey). THAT'S why people use Firefox. Beyond being a web browser that displays HTML and has back,forward, and print buttons it hardly fits "in the same slot". If Firefox is an easier drop-in then Opera for users then Opera needs to reconisder why it can't do the same.

Opera has an integrated news reader, and an integrated email program (which is quite good, if you ask me). It can even do IRC. To me, that makes Opera more of a competitor to the Mozilla Suite than to Firefox. Firefox is "just" a browser, kind of like IE is "just" a browser.

Perhaps Opera should make a browser-only package, but being that the other stuff does not take up much space (Opera is a smaller download than Firefox even with all the included features), nor does it get in the way if you don't want to use it - I don't really see the point.

The main reason why Opera will probably always be under 10% marketshare is because Opera is either Adware or costs money - which makes it hard to compete with free/bundled and ad free. It's also not open source, which means a significant number of geeks won't run it on principle alone.

Re:New browser features

[toddestan]

I'm the opposite. Why should I both with tracking down, downloading, and messing with a pile of extensions - many of which break when Firefox is updated, when I can get almost everything I want in one simple to download and install package? And even with extensions, I still find Opera's way of doing things like tabs to be far superior. The only thing I really miss with Opera is adblock (I know about filter.ini, but it's just not as convienent).

Don't get me wrong, Firefox is great. I have it installed, and I recommend it to people. But I do most of my browsing with Opera.

Re:New browser features

[swayze]

There's a plug-in for that...

I believe that would be the unofficial firefox motto.

Re:New browser features

[hereticmessiah]

Nope, they'll be programming in Emacs' Lisp dialect. :-)

Re:New browser features

[bradhannah]

It sounds like many have opinions of Opera but have not tried it.

Reason #1 I use Firefox and not Opera.
It actually renders pages correctly (especially banking).
Reason #2 I didn't have to wait for "support" to get GMail to work.

Brad

Re:New browser features

[m50d]

It's the cost. That's all there is to it. Opera is much better than any other browser I've tried, but most people don't think it's an adbar or $40 better.

Re:New browser features

[toadnine]

I knew slashdotters often don't bother to read the article, but not reading a small comment correctly? C'mon.

I don't give a damn about marketshare or 'which is best' and I didn't made any statement about that either. In fact, I use both Opera and Firefox which both have some good and some bad aspects.

I just posted a 'fact' I found remarkable.

Re:New browser features

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrade to Opera 8, it crashes much more rarely than Opera 7.

Re:New browser features

[Blakey Rat]

My two bits:

Last time I tried Opera on my Mac, the GUI *really* sucked. It didn't look or behave like a Mac application. (Not to say Firefox does, but Firefox is a ton closer.) Now, to be fair, that was years ago and the interface might be a lot better now, but why bother? Apple put out Safari and now I don't need Opera.

Re:New browser features

[Anonymous Coward]

Try privoxy,it's a little proxy that you run on your machine, it has full regex support just like adblock and a lot more besides.

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

Interestingly enough, AdMuncher (Snikies! another pay for program. Really, how many of you who complain about commercial software are using Windows? Or MacOSX? If you use Linux, you can ignore me) is going to support right click to block on all 3 major browsers, including Opera. I still like and am happy with Proxomitron, but said feature will likely get me to trial AdMuncher, and maybe buy it if it can also do the rest of the stuff prox does for me.

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

Interestingly enough, I don't often have Opera crash. Slightly more in 8.0 than 7.54u2, but I expect the 8.x series to get more stable as it goes along.

I also see about the same number of people as those who claim Opera is unstable here on the Opera forums switching from FireFox as it's unstable for them.

Really, I think some machines just dislike one browser or another (at least on windows, because no on has any idea why some programs work and some don't or work crappily).

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

If you're on windows, try proxomitron, privoxy or AdMuncher. Really.

Proxomitron at least has a very active user community.

See www.streamload.com/jp10558/public and download the grypen-proxomitron zip file. Unzip and run, no install needed, so just delete the folder if you don't like it.

Point Opera at it, enable http 1.1 for proxy and away you go with most ads blocked.

As I said elsewhere, in the next release of AdMucher (pay I know) you'll see right click to block for all 3 browsers.

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

You do understand you can customize it, correct?

Anyway, that's one reason why no one browser should own the market. I personally can't stand FireFoxes UI. It makes me want to barf. It's also pretty slow compared to Opera (though this was v1, I don't try alpha's).

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

I'd say it's at worst equal to FireFox. My understanding is that the only thing that was big for 7 was a better DOM model, however to claim that that is some new thing in v7, remember it was released in Feb of 2003. FireFox 1.0 was just released.

So, comparing something today against something over 2 years old is misleading at best.

Also, I'd claim based on personal experiance that basic functionality was present in Opera since I started using it, back in 2001.

The last thing is that I'd guess that "UI Tricks" are what most people look for in software... I mean, vi has perfectly good basic functionality, but it's UI is horrible, to the point that I use pico as I can figure out how to do stuff in it.

Re:New browser features

[Tesla Tank]

Here it is. It's not AS automated as the Firefox one. But it allows you to do more advanced stuff in my opinion.

Re:New browser features

[The Cydonian]

Classic flamebait argument. You haven't addressed the parent's points AT ALL ("Does FF Deer Park have some features that was first implemented in Opera?"), and yet, managed to not only mock him, but also raised a completely un-related point on marketshares. So, is FF implementing ("copying") features first seen in Opera? I have an open mind, I'm posting this on FF 1.0 btw, and frankly would have appreciated proper refutations of that argument, something that, I might note, I still haven't seen from any FF fanboi on this thread.

As for why Opera is less popular than Firefox, well, I'm no marketing droid. Perhaps it's got to do with the initial momentum and current focus? Arguably, Firefox's core users are converts from the original NS4.7 users; Opera, otoh, has had to start from ground up. Also, Opera's current major focus seems to be on mobiles; I do believe the numbers will be entirely different if you look at that market instead of focussing on W3Schools' logs alone.

In any case, ease-of-use and features don't always correlate to marketshares, or else everyone would, presumably, be using Linux and/or OS X.

Re:New browser features

[arkanes]

*Mozilla*, the core of Firefox, has had working JavaScript for years, and had it years before Opera did. Firefox had it from day one because of this. So I'm not comparing the brand new Firefox against the old Opera, I'm comparing the old Mozilla against the old Opera. Firefox getting new features is neat, for the same reason Opera getting working JavaScript is neat. There's no need to try to cut Firefox down by saying Opera had it first - sure Opera had mouse gestures first, but when it had those, it didn't have working JavaScript or CSS support.

Re:New browser features

[jp10558]

Again, I have no idea why you think Opera just supported javascript or CSS in version 7. I'm reading the changelogs for version 5 (the one I started with, released in december of 2000) and it supports base javascript + new versions of javascript plus CSS2...

http://www.opera.com/windows/changelogs/500-512/in dex.dml

When did Gecko come out? About that same time IIRC. I'm sorry, but to claim NS4 as having much to do with gecko - the entire thing was rewritten from scratch - that's why it took 4 years to get anything out.

Oh, btw - Opera 5 was when they introduced mouse guestures. So your last sentence is dead wrong.

I'm also not getting the relevance of this discussion. So, I'll stop now. But I hate to see misinformation posted.

In the end, what browser you use depends on what you want. If Free in all it's permutations is important to you, you've only got one choice I know of on Windows (though that's an oxymoron right there), some Mozilla dereviant.

If function is important to you, you have to determine if Opera's features now - vs FF's reimplementation some time in the future - is worth it to you.

I think Opera has an opportunity to court those disaffected Seamonky users now that their product of choice has been EOLed.

Re:New browser features

[generic-man]

That's nice, but like 99% of extensions it doesn't yet work with the next version of Firefox. I can only hope that some nice Firefox developer patches it up or forks the code.

In my opinion, crash recovery isn't something that belongs in an extension. Anyone remember Norton Crashguard for Windows?

maxviewers or maxentries?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see browser.sessionhistory.max_entries set at 50. Is this what the article meant instead of max_viewers?

Re:maxviewers or maxentries?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, max_viewers needs to be added and set non-zero to enable the new functionality. Well worth doing, because it makes it very snappy.

Re:maxviewers or maxentries?

[erunaheru]

does anybody know whether it matters what the non-zero number is? does it determine the number of times you can click back or anything?

Graphical History

[Anonymous Coward]

When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

Thumbnails of where the user has been, linked in an easy to follow graphical manner. It would make finding sites of interest (where one has forgotten where they found them) so much easier.

Re:Graphical History

[millwall]

When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

Obligatory answer: When you create it. Stop whining.

Re:Graphical History

[Hank Chinaski]

never. this is ideal stuff for an extension. there is already one called "how did i get here".

Re:Graphical History

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're on Linux, try Kazehakase. It has rudimentary expression of the history as thumbnails, and a full-text history search. Neither are perfect, but nonetheless usable.

Re:Graphical History

[Anonymous Coward]

>When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

What browser are you using that currently supports this? When one does, let us know so we can copy it! Open source software does not INNOVATE!! ;-)

Seriously:
* Learn to ASK for a feature, instead of asking when it will arrive. I am a browser junkie and I have never seen this feature. Maybe you didn't mean it as such, but your question came across as "Are we there yet????" (whine).
* learn to post your FEATURE REQUESTS in the correct forum (ie Bugzilla). Here on Slashdot, the MSIE-using masses will just laugh at you.

Re:Graphical History

[bursa]

NetSurf implements a graphical history:

http://netsurf.sourceforge.net/screenshots/ (last screenshot)

We're looking for developers to work on the GTK port, which currently doesn't implement this.

Re:Graphical History

[TheOldBear]

The old IBM Web Explorer [circa 1993] did that [and it was a nice feature].

Re:Graphical History

[That's Unpossible!]

When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

Let me answer you with a graphical representation.

Re:Graphical History

[augustz]

There is a new API for extension devs who can now implement all sorts of history related improvements.

So something like this may happen sooner then the above post would indicate.

Re:Graphical History

[(v)Jargon(v)]

Yes! I was just about the reply w/ the same thing.
I swear people need a lesson in OSS to learn that they should shut up and respect the fact that the software is free and that people put their free time into it. (I know some get paid).

Re:Graphical History

[dragonman97]

You might want to take a look at Jesse Ruderman's "How'd I Get Here" extension that supports Firefox 1.1's extended history support. I don't think it has graphical thumbnails, but then again, I don't think I'd really want that much clutter (IMHO, YMMV).

http://www.squarefree.com/extensions/high/

Re:Graphical History

[illumin8]

When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

Thumbnails of where the user has been, linked in an easy to follow graphical manner. It would make finding sites of interest (where one has forgotten where they found them) so much easier.

Google Desktop search already does this. It stores thumbnails of the webpages you visit, and when searching through the browser history, it will display the thumbnails along with each search result. Although they are too small to read the text, many times I can remember a website I visited just by the blurry look of a JPEG thumbnail.

It's amazing how our brains can remember images so much better than text.

Re:Graphical History

[jesser]

How'd I Get Here

Two things to look out for

[linuxci]

1. Talkback (aka Quality Feedback Agent) in Windows builds is only enabled by default for a random selection of users on the Windows platform. This feature was built into the installer so that the talkback server on Firefox release builds wouldn't get bogged down.

As this is an alpha release and is a good idea to send in as much crash data as possible you may want to do a custom install on Windows and make sure it's selected.

2. This release comes with a tool you can use to report broken websites. This can be found in the help menu.

This data is stored in a serpate database to bugzilla so that you can report any broken sites without having to worry about clogging up bugzilla with duplicates.

Nothing really new.

[Rirath.com]

It's not like all these changes just spring up overnight. Use nightly (or hourly) trunk builds and you'll be up to date long before these releases or preview releases. I fully understand there's a reason for these sorts of dev previews, but the real testers and developers have been using these features and fixes for quite a long time now.

Trunk builds are quite nice for even the regular user, so long as you're willing to put up with a few issues from time to time. The tradeoff for bug fixes and new features is well worth it, if you know what you're doing. If a really big bug comes along, just use an older build for a week or so. You extensions will usually be A-OK from build to build, but if something breaks them odds are you would have had to version-bump or reinstall them anyway on the next release. Give it a shot. It was fun using livemarks and find as you type before the release, and it's fun using things like fast back and the improved rendering before every else.

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/ - Not updated much anymore, but still a decent resource.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/ - Nightly builds

http://bonsaibugs.org/pyblosxom.cgi/firefox/latest - Latest bug fixes

Re:Nothing really new.

[linuxci]

Speaking of fastback, that is a feature that makes back/forward a lot faster, similar to the performance of Opera.

This feature is switched off by default at the moment until the known regressions are ironed out, but I've enabled it and it works well for me. So if you want to give it a go the instructions are here

In brief:
Type about:config in the URL bar
Right click and select "New > Integer"
Enter pref name (w/o quotes) "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" and click ok
Enter a value (number of pages to cache, the post I linked to suggests 5, if you've got a lot of memory maybe try 15 or 20) and click OK
Restart Firefox

Remember if reporting bugs on it please check that they're not already known about, the reason this is not enabled by default yet is there's a lot of regressions already known and they don't want bugzilla filled with dupes.

Many work

[glrotate]

Working:

Adblock
Launchy
Bugmenot
Spellbound
Stumbleu pon

Broke:

Forecastfox
Dictionarysearch

Re:Many work

[Vo0k]

MozGest required just version bump in .rdf file (then pack the directory, rename to mozgest.xpi and it will reinstall on new startup.)

Re:Many work

[shic]

Spellbound

I can't even get this to work with the latest release of Firefox 1.04 and Thunderbird 1.02 - I wonder if this is why it is not listed among the extensions on the main Mozilla update page?

Re:Many work

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Adblock does work, after updating it. Launchy doesn't seem to work though, period.

Also broken:
Download Statusbar
Favicon Picker
Greasemonkey

Also working:
Flashblock
Gcache

Claims it's working, but doesn't:
SessionSaver

Re:Many work

[Plutor]

ForecastFox is working for me. Try upgrading to 0.7.8.

Re:Many work

[quiddity]

you know favicons make your bookmarks.html file HUGE, right? each one adds 5-15+ lines of code. full set would make a 1mb bookmark.html into a 5mb bookmark.html. which makes everything s...l...o...w.

add to your user.js:

// Disable Bookmark Icons, otherwise bookmark.html becomes huge
user_pref("browser.chrome.site_icons", false);
user_pref("browser.chrome.favicons", false);

Re:Many work

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't keep any in the bookmark menu itself, only as quicklinks. 40 or so, tops (more won't fit).

And they're what, less than a kbyte each? 50k isn't going to murder startup time.

Re:Many work

[Anonymous Coward]

I managed to get SessionSaver working by installing the version on this page:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4718 4

Hope this helps.

Re:Many work

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Thanks, but no luck there either. It opens all my tabs, but won't load the pages...

Fast back

[Scrameustache]

Finally an imitation of Safari's SnapBack!

I love that thing, I've been missing it when using Firefox.
It lets you go back to the last adress you specified to the browser (by typing it in or using a bookmark), quite usefull when you let yourself wander semi-randomly through clicking links.

Re:Fast back

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally an imitation of an insightful post!

Re:Fast back

[Overzeetop]

Darned, I was hoping they were implementing the Opera back/forward action, where the page is simply redrawn, for lack of the proper term, as the page you saw, rather than re-executed or re-downloaded. In Opera, the page redraws were so fast as to be unnoticable, and there were no data-post limitations. It was a snapshot rather than a reload. Of course, if you wanted to, you could just reload the page manually to re-invoke the post (or whatever actually happened on the page)

Re:Fast back

[linuxci]

They are, it's the parent post that got it wrong.

Feature off by default as it's got some bugs at the moment, see my earlier comments on how to enable it.

Not sure if they plan to implement the feature the parent mentioned in safari

Re:Fast back

[Scrameustache]

They are, it's the parent post that got it wrong.
[...]
Not sure if they plan to implement the feature the parent mentioned in safari

Awww... ah well, wishfull thinking. This sounds good too though : )
Thanks for the correction.

Re:Fast back

[fbjon]

Is there anything in Firefox coming like Opera's thrash can which is somewhat related to the snapshot/fastback, opening previously closed windows?

Re: Fast back

[whitehatlurker]

Well, that's nice and it is one of my favourite features in Opera. (Well, one of many.)

However, until the "Mouse Gestures" extension is supported, it's not a full replacement for that Opera feature.

Will "Mouse gestures" ever be incorporated into the main code base? (Yeah, I know it goes against the development philosophy at Mozilla, but to my mind it's a major part.)

Re: Fast back

[Taladar]

I guess you are one of those people like me then who finds himself trying Mouse Gestures in IE or Firefox when one has to use them because it isn't the own PC and wonders wtf it won't close the current window or why the next page of google results isn't displayed.

Re:Fast back

[SilicaiMan]

I was hoping they were implementing the Opera back/forward action, where the page is simply redrawn ...

I'm hoping the mouse gesture extension adopts that. Mouse gestures in Firefox are currently horribly implemented.

Re:Fast back

[Anonymous Coward]

TBE and TabMix have "undo close tab". Usually set to middle-click on an empty spot on the tab bar. Won't do it for windows, but we all use tabs, right?

Re: Fast back

[whitehatlurker]

I guess you are one of those people
Yeah, I get that a lot.
... like me
Whoa - that's different

Seriously, yes, I want my mouse to do more for me, no matter what the application. (I blame Opera.) You might want to check out strokeit. (Yeah, it's not what you're thinking, if I'm really like you.) Take it along with you on your USB key.

Re:Fast back

[Anonymous Coward]

undoclosetab extension:

http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/lofiversion/index.p hp/t226.html

Re:Fast back

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

" Darned, I was hoping they were implementing the Opera back/forward action, where the page is simply redrawn, for lack of the proper term, as the page you saw, rather than re-executed or re-downloaded. In Opera, the page redraws were so fast as to be unnoticable, and there were no data-post limitations. It was a snapshot rather than a reload. Of course, if you wanted to, you could just reload the page manually to re-invoke the post (or whatever actually happened on the page)"

That's the way that Trident (the Internet Explorer rendering engine) does things, and it's one of the big new features in 1.1. Hopefully it will be debugged enough by the time 1.1 ships to make it into the release.

Right now, Firefox is ploddingly slow on my 1.5GHz P-M system. Interestingly, it's considerably faster on Windows.

1.1 Extensions

[mdew]

http://www.projects1.com/firefox/exthacks/FFnightl yextensions.html

something to help with the coversion to 1.0->1.1, also best to try a new profile too.

Re:1.1 Extensions

[Grey Ninja]

Thanks for the info. Got my adblock and ForecastFox working again. :) Now the only thing missing is Linkification and gcache, and I can easily live without those. (And if I REALLY wanted them, I could just modify the extensions myself)

I think you mean Opera's Rewind button!

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari's SnapBack?

Oh that would be Apple's copy of Opera's Rewind button. It seems like every major browser innovation in recent years has been copied from Opera.

But I Thought

[CastrTroy]

But I thought they outlawed internet hunting?

Re:But I Thought

[Anonymous Coward]

These deers are not for hunting. They are for sex!

Keychain on OS X?

[pschmied]

Does anybody know the status of keychain integration on Mac OS X?

I know that Camino exists, but I really like the nifty Firefox extensions. Unfortunately, keychain integration is really a killer feature for me.

Anyone else wish there were keychain integration? Maybe somebody has already started working on this?

-Peter

Re:Keychain on OS X?

[chrisblore]

It's coming, but not until Firefox 1.5 (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:1.1_Mac_Migrators ).

"The Safari migrator will not be importing passwords for 1.1. For 1.5 we will utilize the Keychain for password storage and provide a simple migration solution."

Re:Keychain on OS X?

[argent]

Camino Keychain Integration isn't all that hot, because Camino doesn't support multiple passwords per site, so you end up with separate Keychain entries for Camino and Webkit browsers.

Re:Keychain on OS X?

[Blakey Rat]

I'd rather have the OS X spellchecker working. (Although both would be ideal...) The biggest pain for me is having to type in forum posts without any spell-checker.

Tabs

[Mr_Silver]

I'm still looking forward to the day when you can ctrl-click a link and have the tab open immediately to the right of the currently active one and not at the far end of a line of tabs.

So far, the only way I've found of solving this is to download the miniT extension and then modify a text file. This is 2005, not 1995.

Re:Tabs

[ischorr]

One of the first things I noticed about Netscape 8 when I downloaded it the other day is that it does this by default. It also (by default but can be changed) jumps back to the most recently selected tab when closing an open one, which is something else I've wanted for a while.

Actually, I have to admit, once I spent 10 minutes figuring out how to re-organize the browser (get rid of the multi-tab bar, get my "Personal Toolbar" bookmarks back, turn Netscape Trust Ratings off), I actually like it a lot. Even the "browse in IE" feature is nice - I can classify a sub-range of sites at work that only open in IE, have it switch to IE only in those cases and browse with Firefox in all others. Don't get me wrong, I tend towards the "Mozilla should be standards-compliant, not IE-compliant" side of that particular argument, but at work it's the best possible compromise I've been able to come up with...since there's no chance that IT is going to convert our documentation storage system any time before the end of the decade.

It's got a handful of quirks (and not nearly enough extensions or themes - yet), but after spending some time with it Netscape 8 really DOES have some decent value to it.

Just wondering if it'll be another 6 months after Firefox 1.1 is released for Netscape to pick up the changes =)

Product Placement?

[kevin_conaway]

So did Deer Park water pay them for the naming rights to this release or what? Or is it just a coincidence? That could actually be pretty funny, if there was product placement in open source release names.

Re:Product Placement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Deer Park water? Never heard of it. Deer Park is however, the name one of the nieghboring towns where I grew up.

Re:Product Placement?

[Monkey Angst]

It's also the place where the Buddha preached his first sermon after attaining enlightenment.

Re:Product Placement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Deer Park is where I work, actually. Never heard of the water company, though.

Memory leak

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know whether or not the monstrosity that is the notorious memory leak issue has been taken care of? It does happen quite often and it is a bane to have to close a Firefox session ripe with numerous tabs.

Re:Memory leak

[ssj_195]

It's actually memory leaks; there's a whole bunch of the buggers. Lots of leaks have been found and fixed, so I'm betting it won't be as bad as it used to be, but I doubt they've got them all, alas.

Re:Memory leak

[ssj_195]

Forgot to add - check out the Session Saver extension. Makes closing and re-opening a tab-heavy session pretty much painless.

Re:Memory leak

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the tip! Your adviec is very much appreciated.

Just me, or...

[Anonymous Coward]

DUDE, IT'S FAAAAST!

[OT] crashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know of an extension that will automatically copy into clipboard whatever it is you happen to be writing at the time in a [textarea] of a form?

I've had browsers (including firefox) crash on me after writing a lengthy text to a forum or whatever, just a second before hitting reply. I always feel like pulling my hair out, so an extension that always keeps a working copy of what is being written would be a godsend. Is there such a thing?

Re:[OT] crashing

[Anonymous Coward]

The best I could find for you is Auto Copy Lite, an extension which boasts automatically copying to the clipboard the text you select within Firefox. It is a shame there is no apparent better option and I understand your frustration -- more from losing data on busy websites than with crashing browsers -- but why not use this extension and just select all the text you have written (Control + A on Windows) every time you, say, finish a paragraph?

Sorry for not being more helpful.

Re:[OT] crashing

[MrCopilot]

Yeah, its called Kate or Wordpad or better yet a text editor with a spellcheck.

Re:[OT] crashing

[wild_berry]

We've found a Dupe poster!

The legal representatives of Mr A. Coward, whose copy rights you have infringed will contact you shortly.

Re:[OT] crashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Grease Monkey with Mozilla and install this .
You may need to navigate to about:config and changed signed.applets.codebase_principal_support to true in order to allow Mozilla to let a script mess with vital bits like your clipboard.

And it may prompt you on every page it tries to run on. May be a way to fix that, didn't look. But the end result is what you want. Be warned though, granting access to scripts from an entire domain to mess with this data is probably a dangerous idea.

Note copy function stolen from http://www.krikkit.net/howto_javascript_copy_clipb oard.html

Re:[OT] crashing

[xsarpedonx]

Reposting while logged in. Personally I don't want things messing with my clipboard data, but here you go. Use Grease Monkey with Mozilla and install this . You may need to navigate to about:config and changed signed.applets.codebase_principal_support to true in order to allow Mozilla to let a script mess with vital bits like your clipboard. And it may prompt you on every page it tries to run on. May be a way to fix that, didn't look. But the end result is what you want. Be warned though, granting access to scripts from an entire domain to mess with this data is probably a dangerous idea. Note: copy function stolen from http://www.krikkit.net/howto_javascript_copy_clipb oard.html

Re:[OT] crashing

[FJR1300 Rider]

Heh. That Mr A. Coward is me :-P Just forgot I wasn't logged in.

Re:[OT] crashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Kate has a spellchecker. Install aspell or ispell.

Re:[OT] crashing

[wild_berry]

Do you still want to press charges? :-P

Re:Graphical History, how to start

[kbrosnan]

When someone writes some writes some code to implememt an API that Robert O'Callahan wrote for the upcoming release. The API renders web pages to images.

Right now Mozilla/Firefox use a rather crusty history file format, Mork. There are plans to replace this history file with sqlite (Bug 245745, not until Gecko 1.9) which would make an extension writer's job a bit easier.

[OT] crashing

[FJR1300 Rider]

Does anyone know of an extension that will automatically copy into clipboard whatever it is you happen to be writing at the time in a [textarea] of a form?

I've had browsers (including firefox) crash on me after writing a lengthy text to a forum or whatever, just a second before hitting reply. I always feel like pulling my hair out, so an extension that always keeps a working copy of what is being written would be a godsend. Is there such a thing?

Extension Installation

[MynockGuano]

Something I haven't seen mentioned that has quietly slipped in is the new extension-installation support. You can place .xpi files directly in the 'extensions' directory of either the program or your profile, and the next time you start it, Deer Park will automatically recognize and install the new one. This would seem especially noteworthy at this point in time, since many "broken" extensions can be hand-updated by bumping the version numbers in the extension's install.rdf and re-zipping the .xpi. You can just stick a manually-bumped .xpi directly in one of the above-mentioned 'extensions' directories and restart the program. You no longer need to use a web installer, make a dummy webpage, or drag-and-drop the file to the Extension Manager (something that I've found--at least under Linux--to be reliably unreliable most of the time).

Re:Extension Installation

[Anonymous Coward]

You no longer need to use a web installer, make a dummy webpage, or drag-and-drop the file to the Extension Manager

Huh? Just type /home/user/ into the address bar and click on the XPI.

Re:Extension Installation

[MynockGuano]

Every time I've done that, it has tried to download the file instead of installing it. Perhaps I have a preference set badly; my profile is ancient.

I'll be sure to check it out again, though. Thanks!

Re:Extension Installation

[LnxAddct]

Or.... just go to about:config and change extensions.disabledObsolete to false and never worry about any of what you just wrote about no matter what platform you're using:) That option has been in there since at least 0.7, I hope you havent been unzipping and editing those file this whole time.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Extension Installation

[MynockGuano]

Of course not; but there's been times that I've had problems getting Firefox to run the extension install--it seems to prefer downloading it. This is just a handy way to install extensions that I know has been in the works, but I didn't notice it mentioned anywhere in the release notes. As for the unzip for version bump stuff, it was just an example that was somewhat relevant to the situation, so I used it.

bug fixes

[UlfGabe]

# 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.

I believe that some applause is nessisary.

Re:bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

"I believe that some applause is nessisary"

As is some spellchecking :)

Re:bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? A hack to make a particular site's poor HTML look good? That's a ticket to bloatware, folks.

Re:bug fixes

[iamlucky13]

I never cared about it, so I never read up on it. Was this genuinely a bug, or was it the result of Slashdot's messed up, almost 3.2 compliant coding? It would seem dumb to fix a bug in page by modifying the browser, even if it is slashdot.

Here's my report on using it. I downloaded Deer Park last night. I am using it now, and it's been working fine so far. I did have one page (Mount St. Helen's Volcano Cam) display as code rather than rendering, but that's been the only problem so far. I figure I'll mess around a bit and try to figure out the source of the problem before I submit a bug report.

Re:bug fixes

[erunaheru]

didn't we already have this discussion?

Aside from the faster history

[beforewisdom]

Is there anything else in end-user land worth checking out?

Re:Aside from the faster history

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm personally looking forward to using site-specific CSS. Granted, Greasemonkey works well for this, though..

Re:Aside from the faster history

[beforewisdom]

What do you want that for? Turn off obnoxious styles?

Re:Aside from the faster history

[Jemm]

Yes,

"Support for profile "temp" directory on local filesystem

It is now possible to store the network cache (copies of visited webpages) and the XUL fastload cache (precompiled user interface code) on a local disk, while keeping the rest of the profile data on a network drive. This will increase performance and reduce network traffic for users in a network environment. "

Will make my life better in many ways.

Thanks again Mozilla team.

Re:Tabs: go extension hunting

[kbrosnan]

Tab mix http://tab-mix.info.tm/
Tab opening - Open new tabs next to the current one with a customizable order

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=625

not working for me

[Anonymous Coward]

bookmark folder not showing
nav buttons disabled (dead)
some (important) plugin not compatible
cant even find "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" on about:config

reverting to old 1.04
worst waste of 30 minutes

Re:not working for me

[MynockGuano]

cant even find "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" on about:config

I found it by right-clicking, selecting "New->Integer" and typing in "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" in about:config.

Re:not working for me

[mdew]

tried a new profile?

Re:not working for me

[Slashcrap]

bookmark folder not showing
nav buttons disabled (dead)
some (important) plugin not compatible
cant even find "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" on about:config

reverting to old 1.04
worst waste of 30 minutes

reading lame post on slashdot from anonymous coward
whining about alpha software
because too dumb to use new profile

reverting to kuro5hin
worst waste of 30 seconds

Re:not working for me

[bad_outlook]

• • cant even find "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" on about:config
  
  Right, it's not supposed to be there, but it's simple to add. Pull up about:config:
  
  • right-click
    
  • new
    
  • name it browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers
    
  • OK
    
  • enter a value other than 0 (like 1)
    
  • OK
    
  • restart
    
  • Done

bo

Re:not working for me

[wild_berry]

Try the "delete the Chrome directory in your profile directory trick".

I say this for the people who may find themselves in a similar position; you're posting anonymously becuase you're a troll. [mutters: sign up, log in, be part of the community, be accountable for the words you post]

Re:not working for me

[cygnus]

are you sure you had to do Integer? i mean, the OP says any non-zero number. i was thinking of trying something irrational or imaginary....

How about...

[jbarr]

...providing a toolbar button for the new Sanitize feature? Several features surprisingly lack toolbar icons (like Print Preview, Sanitize, etc.)

Also, be aware that many extensions do NOT recognize the latest Deer Park build.

As an Alpha, it looks pretty good. My only fear is that the likes of Microsoft use these Alpha builds as templates for their new releases...

Re:How about...

[Shaper_pmp]

What, you mean in five years' time they'll release a "new" version of IE with all these current features in?

Keeping it trim

[TintinX]

I've gotta say that I'm a little skeptical about the need for some of the 'fixes' in this build.
The attraction of FF is that it's sleek and lightweight. I don't want it to start making all kinds of allowances for bad formatting and adding 'features' like the Sanitize option. This is what optional extensions are for.
Let's focus on keeping FF slender. I don't like to think of a senario in, say, a couple of year's time when FF3.0 has become bloated.
Am I alone?

Re:Keeping it trim

[chrisblore]

No, I don't think you are alone. In fact many people were concerned at the time when Ben Goodger was landing the patch that changed the options window that Firefox was becoming too bloated.

Inevitably, with the all-encompassing userbase of Firefox, discipline is needed by the lead developers especially in ensuring that Firefox sticks to its roots and does not make the mistake of adding unnecessary features that can quite easily be added by extensions. Admittedly, some new features such as the automatic updater that will be with us by Firefox 1.1 are very useful while at the same time being 'cool'. This will make it easier for dialup users to receive hte latest patches and have them installed without having to go through the hassle of downloading the entire program again.

The Mozilla Suite, to its cost, did become too feature-full and as such was too much of an 'all things to all men' piece of software, never really gaining that much widespread popularity. There is real opportunity with Firefox but we ultimately must not alienate its main fans!

Re:Keeping it trim

[fbjon]

My opinion as well. What I like most about Firefox is that it has the option of remaining slimline. Although I use Opera all day long, I also use FF, especially when designing web pages (obviously). My biggest gripe is that it hogs a bucketload of memory before even loading a single page, and thus takes a while to load. More streamlining, leave the fancy stuff to extensions, please!

Re:Keeping it trim

[Gibsnag]

I agree with you on this point. If the mozilla devs want to add these cool but technically unnecessary features in (which is cool), then release them as official extensions to the main browser to stop it getting all microsofty and bloated.

The devs could then release different versions of the same browser for example; a lightweight version, regular version with some official mozilla feature extensions preloaded, and a heavyweight version with the offical mozilla features plus some of the best community extensions preloaded.

Re:Keeping it trim

[chrisblore]

This kind of thing has been discussed before but it seems that 'packs' such as you mension aren't coming any time soon because of the performance hit that you inevitably take from having so many extensions installed. Besides, the whole point of extensions is complete customisability and the freedom to mix and match extensions to your heart's content and exactly to your wishes.

Re:Keeping it trim

[Jedbro]

What fixes are you talking about, the only thing I see that could be viewed as 'bloat' is the 'sanatize' option.

Firefox 1.0 has this, just hidden in the privacy pref.

The goal of Firefox is to keep the interface simple, yet provide an ever-improving backend for making killer apps... hence XULRunner.

One day, firefox will only be a shell that rides on the awesome XULRunner platform.

Re:Keeping it trim

[Nasarius]

Let's focus on keeping FF slender.

You're free to use Lynx. It's really sleek and lightweight. But wait, they added color! Now it's bloated!

I'm really sick of this attitude that more features == bloat. It's not true, and it doesn't make you cool for saying so.

Re:Keeping it trim

[Gibsnag]

I was thinking that for more normal computer users (read: not /.ers) having a package with some cool functionality without having to mess around with lots of extensions themselves would be useful as often they'll have been tricked into buying that uber new P4 3.6 for £1500 for web browsing and the occasional Word Document from PCWorld and a small performance hit won't bother these types of users at all.

Re:Keeping it trim

[iamlucky13]

Sanitize is a poor example of bloat. As far as I can tell, it's basically a shortcut to the already existing button in Tools > Options > Privacy that lets you "Delete all information stored while browsing." It does let you specifically select what information you clear, though.

Re:Keeping it trim

[erunaheru]

"It does let you specifically select what information you clear, though." You can do that too, just click the individual clear buttons.

Re:Keeping it trim

[Tumbleweed]

The words 'Firefox' and 'slender' don't really go together; check the memory usage of Firefox sometime. *shudder*

When I first heard Firefox was coming out, I was all excited. Then I heard that it, too, would be based on XUL, and, well, here we are. FF is a great browser, but I'm still waiting for a lightweight gecko-based Windows browser. K-Meleon has a looong way to go, unfortunately, though it's a great start.

Re:Keeping it trim

[jp10558]

Opera user's points exactly.

Just installed it, first impressions...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Pro:

* An old xml text webpage of mine, first I clicked on, showed an xlink image. Inline images were the one thing I knew of preventing 100% XML webpages.

* SVG. When I finally converted from seamonkey for all the gorgeous features I didn't realize firefox had, the lack of SVG hurt, hurt badly.

Con:

* Alot of extensions seem to be broken. Waiting for updates will be hard.

* Greasemonkey. Yes, I know it's just another extension, but at work, this one is a lifesaver. Going without it means using IE for our stupid webapps.

* The GrayModern theme is broken. The realization that this theme existed convinced me to switch from seamonkey. God I hate the default theme. (Are there any compatible themes at this point? I'd take anything other than the default!)

Strange:

* Even though it disabled the FavIcon Picker extension, alot of my links still have the icons I set for them. Wondering if a single click on them will undo the handywork.

Re:Just installed it, first impressions...

[Anthracks]

I've been annoyed that Greasemonkey doesn't work with it either, but apparently it was actually a bug in Greasemonkey and will be fixed in their next release. Read that here while I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on :) http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10173

Re:Just installed it, first impressions...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

This is it. Doesn't work for me though, I still get the compatibility thing.

"Filling station"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you must mean gas station. Foreigner. Also, capitalize both letters of a state's postal abbreviation.

Re:"Filling station"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually postal codes are either both cap with no period as in MO or cap and small with a period. Mo.

Re:"Filling station"?

[Scaba]

No, they're two-letter capitals only. The other way is how grandma writes it.

Re:"Filling station"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Double cap is the postal way of doing it, however either are acceptable in writing.

Re:"Filling station"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Filling station" is also prefectly acceptable American usage. Just because you don't happen to use it, doesn't make it "foreign", dickhead.

Re:"Filling station"?

[bmongar]

He mean foreign as in not from central Missouri or Missourah as they call it in them there parts.

The Canvas

[notfancy]

The <canvas> is cool. Safari compatibility or not, this could be the LOGO of the noughties. JavaScript is a fun language when you're not trying to be cross-compatible with every browser under the sun.

However, the last paragraph reads:

If fallback content is desired, some CSS tricks must be employed to mask the fallback content from Safari (which should render just the canvas), and also to mask the CSS tricks themselves from IE (which should render the fallback content). Todo: get hixie to put the CSS bits in

(emphasis in the original). While I commend Ian's commitment to standards, I can't imagine he will be very pleased with this tasks (for those who don't know him, he's victriolic against violations of the standards. He's a first-rate purist). I predicts the flames will be very pretty to look at.

Re:The Canvas

[tyroney]

Isn't SVG an already full-featured and becoming-implemented way to do this kind of thing?

Re:The Canvas

[notfancy]

The canvas is a drawing plane together with a JavaScript API. If you read the examples, you don't manipulate the canvas through a DOM-like interface, but you draw on it, or rather, issue draw commands to it. This is very much like Java's Graphics, except you don't have to compile, test, debug, compile ad nauseam to try simple graphics or hacks, you can just use Firefox and Venkman to try, play and prototype.

SVG is an XML application for vector graphics, and the programming and interaction model for it is, as far as I can tell, quite complicated. You'll probably need something like an authoring environment for anything but the simplest drawings.

Deer Park??

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is a great browser. But why are they dropping its decent name and using something extremely stupid like DEER PARK? Are they going to sell spring water on their website soon (along with their hats and t-shirts?) TAKE BACK THE WEB WITH DEER PARK!

....

Re:Deer Park??

[alex_ware]

Deer Park is so that it ISNT CALLED FIREFOX. If anything is badly wrong and it bears firefox branding then it is bad press but if it is an alpha build that is called by another name then there is no risk.

Re:Deer Park??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if that's the case, call it something funny - like Codename Gary Coleman or something.

Re:Deer Park??

[mscode3]

"Deer Park" was the place where the historic Buddha, Shakyamuni, gave his first Dharma talk ("sermon") after becoming enlightened. It is also a very popular name for Buddhist temples, monasteries and Dharma centers. However, I don't know if the person(s) who gave it this code name are Buddhists or even realize the connection.

Just fix the runaway bookmarks and I'll be happy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I applaud the Firefox developers for their great efforts, but I think they have to fix the basics before developing more flash and bloat. Every version of Firefox from the first beta to the present, on Windows machines (Win XP Pro SP2, Win 98 SE) has bookmarks that like to run away (auto-scroll in the wrong direction) as you try to catch one. Maybe it works on Linux, but it's real frustrating on a Windows machine, and I can't recommend Firefox to anybody until they get that fixed.
Also, I hate having to switch to IE6 to view an eBay item that has many thumbnail images (never gets them all loaded), but that's probably not Firefox's fault, at least I hope so.

CSS 3

[Epeeist]

Interesting that they have already started to implement some of the proposed CSS 3 features and are fixing some CSS2 breakages.

That other browser can't even get CSS 1 right, and won't be implementing CSS 2 features in the edition that is supposed to be out this summer.

Speaking as somebody who has come close to throwing his PC out of the window this morning because IE doesn't do z-indexes properly, which means that I have to look for a yet another workaround to cope with its breakages.

Re:CSS 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that they have already started to implement some of the proposed CSS 3 features

CSS 3 is a family of specifications. Some of them are finished and ready to be implemented. There's nothing "proposed" about them, they are full, finished specifications, and Opera and Safari are implementing them as well.

That other browser can't even get CSS 1 right, and won't be implementing CSS 2 features in the edition that is supposed to be out this summer.

Apart from rumours from somebody who has little credibility (IMHO), we don't know one way or the other what improvements Internet Explorer 7's rendering engine will have. I'm personally taking the Internet Explorer developers' silence on the matter to be a bad omen, but it's not certain that there won't be big improvements.

Also, it's the beta that's due this summer. God knows how long it'll take for the final version to be released.

Re:CSS 3

[KillShill]

put some IE detection in your web page...

and in VERY LARGE LETTERS, say YOUR WEB BROWSER SUCKS, EITHER GET A NEW ONE OR YOU WILL HAVE A SHITTY EXPERIENCE ON MY SITE.

make it clear to your users where the problem lies. even if they don't migrate, educate them.

Re:CSS 3

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

That's how you lose customers and lose eyes. No one is going to switch to Firefox because you're being an ass and refusing to write pages compatible with their browser. If you're writing decent code, you shouldn't have any trouble getting your site to work on IE. Or Firefox. Or Opera. Or WebCore. Or KHTML.

Re:CSS 3

[KillShill]

then clearly, designers ought not to complain about a problem they can and won't do anything about.

quit whining, because that helps no one. take some initiative, lose a few "eyeballs" and have the testicles to go through with it.

having to "fix" broken browsers is ultimately bad for everyone, even for those with aforementioned browsers.

Backup your .Mozilla directory

[Stonent1]

Make sure to backup your firefox data in your home directory. The last beta I used messed up my settings to where it reset everything to default lost all my themes, extensions, cached field entries etc. When I switched back to the stable version, firefox would just lock up.

non-zero number?

[mgessner]

If I set it to -1, does it eat up IE?

"this release is for testers and developers only"

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they enforce that? I'm neither, and so far nothing's happened t

Mod the child, not the parent

[Overzeetop]

Thanks for the info. I use FF in a "production" environment, so I won't be trying it just yet, but its good to know that this "feature" is on the horizon. There have been times the going back and printing an invoice page with a discount which was mystriously not included in the final payment invoice has asved me some cash. Not to mention the doing page searches from a slow server...I hate having to wait for the re-post and server-side app to execute again.

(We've come a long way from the early 90s, when you actually had to wait for jpgs to load 'cause the processors could do the DCTs only so fast)

Acid2 Test

[mnemonic_]

Does it pass the Acid2 test yet?

Re:Acid2 Test

[bunratty]

No, so far only a development version of Safari passes Acid2.

Re:Acid2 Test

[kbrosnan]

See my previous comment about Firefox and the Acid2 test. http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148742&cid= 12465304

Re:Acid2 Test

[hereticmessiah]

Of course not. It doesn't even use the latest stable build of Gecko. Firefox != Gecko. The work on getting Gecko compliant enough to render the Acid2 test properly is ongoing.

When Firefox 1.1 comes out, that'll use the most up-to-date build of Gecko, and it'll stay synchronised with it from now on, which it hasn't been up till now.

Re:Acid2 Test

[bunratty]

Huh? Deer Park is Firefox 1.1, and does use the latest build of Gecko.

Still not CSS2.1-compliant...

[GeekDork]

See bug #9458 from July 1999. (You might have to copy the link and open it by hand since the Mozilla-Bugzilla does a referer-check to filter out requests from slashdot links...)

Re:Still not CSS2.1-compliant...

[a24061]

(Or install the PrefBar extension and leave "Referrer" switched off except when you need it.)

Why does Bugzilla do that? Is it just to prevent the site getting slashdotted?

Re:Still not CSS2.1-compliant...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does Bugzilla do that? Is it just to prevent the site getting slashdotted?

Of course. Before they did that, bugzilla was pretty much dead for several hours every time there was a slashdot story about Mozilla stuff. Bugzilla is designed as a front-end for developers to work with a bug database, not as an information source and discussion place for the world in general. All the bug pages are dynamically generated and involve doing several database queries.

Re:Still not CSS2.1-compliant...

[BZ]

Yes. Otherwise it would become unusable for a day or so any time there's a slashdot story, and that would be rather unfortunate.

Slightliy smaller

[Anonymous Coward]

On Win2K it uses slightly less memory than 1.04 (2 MB less) and feels a bit faster.

It's interesting that the fox is missing from the icon, you only can see the blue planet.

Internet Explorer and CSS

[RoadkillBunny]

IE is really behind now. Firefox is starting to implement CSS3 and IE dosn't even have full CSS2!

Re:Internet Explorer and CSS

[bunratty]

Firefox doesn't have full CSS2 either. Does any browser?

Re:Internet Explorer and CSS

[fyrewulff]

Technically, IE5 Mac has CSS3 (I think? someone correct me if I'm wrong). But you know, it's uh... IE mac.

Nonzero?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can I set the max viewers setting to -4 or something like that? What happens then?

Greasemonkey & new features

[Anonymous Coward]

To those of you who want to use greasemonkey w/deerpark should get the greasemonkey beta (0.3.4)
http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/changes/0.3.4.html

Deerpark includes a bug fix that is invaluable to me, namely, the ability to specify whether dns requests are handled locally or by your SOCKS proxy.

Re:Greasemonkey & new features

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Tried that, and it's not working.

Beware!

[smartdreamer]

Deer Park Alpha 1 is an alpha release of our next generation Firefox browser and it is being made available for testing purposes only. Deer Park Alpha 1 is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox 1.0.x should not use Deer Park Alpha 1.

Watch out before trying this. Deer Park IS NOT Firefox and may break your current Firefox setup. Make sure to backup your profiles.

Adblock

[Baki]

I bought opera for 3 operating systems, yet I hardly use it due to lack of adblock.

Also: its client certificate handling is clumsy to say the least.

And it is less stable.

-moz-outline-radius

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly is it ok for Mozilla to extend the CSS spec with their own proprietary rules?

btw the anti-script-bot image is hella hard to read.

Crippled behaviour since day one!

[clacke]

Double click the DeerPark Disk Image to open it in Finder and drag the Deer Park application onto your hard disk. Do not double click the icon in the disk image!

This is a serious bug!

The best thing about bundles and disk images is that I can try the program out without installing anything. Works on all other programs I use.
What kind of crippled code runs differently on one filesystem than on another? (Well, at least it doesn't need write permission to its own directories)

History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[KidSock]

Sometimes when I move the mouse over the browser main display pane it triggers a "back" event. This is with the mouse pointer no where near the back button. It's very annoying. It it possible that FF 1.0.4 has some kind of gesture control turned on? If so, how can I turn it off?

Re:History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[Hockney Twang]

I've experienced this, but I attributed it to a weird problem with the synaptics touchpad driver. What kind of mouse are you using and on what kind of system?

Re:History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[KidSock]

A synaptics touchpad. And w/ RH 7.3 not using the synaptics driver it worked perfected. Add me to list of data points.

Re:History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[Hockney Twang]

I think I found the solution here. Apparently you need to install a prog for use in configuring the touchpad(qsynaptics or ksynaptics) which then allows you to disable the back and forward gestures that are inherent in the touchpad.

Re:History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[KidSock]

Yup, this is definately the problem. Unfortunately I cannot seem to figure out what driver option disables gesture control. I have tried disabling many thing and I can see the options being parsed in the X server log file but none appear to have any affect whatsoever. This is very frustrating!

Re:History Problem w/ FF 1.0.4 on Linux

[Hockney Twang]

Also at that link are instructions for disabling the horizontal scroll event in FF. Although that only solves for FF and not any other apps that have horizontal scroll triggers that might be inadvertently activated.

This is probably too subtle

[heinousjay]

That's not how to spell sarcasm

Re:This is probably too subtle

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa. I nominate this as the stupidest response ever!

Deer Park. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

What the heck?

This name conjures up several images in my mind. . .

1. A game reserve filled with hunting stock. The psychological message here seems to be one of many fat and juicy users all ripe for the plucking by the various predators of the web.

2. Dear Tick. The sound is similar enough to make my emotional muscle twitch just a little bit. If everybody else is like me, then that's a hundred thousand gallons of stress micro-siphoned from your brain into the Matrix.

What's going on over there at Mozilla?

-FL

Re:Deer Park. . ?

[evilmousse]

it's also where buddha gave his first teachings after reaching enlightenment. initially to the wild deer, then to asthetics that had shunned him prior, then to many.

more info

i also have to mention the AWESOME buddha manga by Oosamu Tezuka. one of my favorites.

Better 3-button mouse support in OS X

[Jormundgard]

Dunno if this has been mentioned, but I've been using a Deer Park alpha bild for a while on OS X and it has much better three-button mouse support, which the older Firefox seemed to be lacking.

Scrolling with the mouse wheel still sucks though.

way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

way to go guys...way to bring news that is almost 2 weeks old. The alpha for Deer Park has been around for a while now. And yes, while it is nice in several ways, there is still plenty of work left to be done.

Is this the same build as last week?

[sideshow]

I installed Deer Park Alpha 1 last week sometime. Was a newer build released today or is this the same thing?

I wont be satisfied with firefix until...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wont be satisfied with firefix until it stops deleting all my bookmarks IE doesn't do that. Opera doesn't do that.

Why NOT Opera? (was Re:New browser features)

[Laebshade]

Why not Opera? Well, two things: it's: not open source and it's not free. Ok, so #2 can be disputed a tad, but who wants to see ads as part of their browser (for the "free" version, that is)?

How about rendering to a texture

[Urusai]

That way you can spin the page around and exclaim "It's a Unix system!!" while your associates nod sagely at your precociousness.

JS Performance Comparison

[fupeg]

It's always interesting to compare how a new browser performs. I like to run BenchJS to see how it handles Javascript and DHTML. A quick comparison showed:

• Explorer 6.0.28 -- 58.43 seconds
• Opera 8.0 -- 15.94 seconds
• Firefox 1.0.4 -- 40.44 seconds
• Deer Park Alpha 1 -- 24.07 seconds

This was all done on my crappy old P3-600 MHz laptop running XP Pro. So Deer Park looks pretty fast so far.

Re:JS Performance Comparison

[jp10558]

Cool.

For Opera 8 anyway on my A64 3400+ it 6.42 seconds. Amazing, for web browsing I only get a 4x performance boost from P3 600 to my chip ...

Memory hog

[trungson]

Before adding new features, I would like to see optimizations be performed on FF, after surfing a while and the process just takes a huge chunk of memory. Granted memory is cheap nowaday but it make user's computer faster with a smaller footprint.

Re:Memory hog

[erunaheru]

You can change the size of the memory cache in about:config browser.cache.memory.capacity

No need to press shift

[Anonymous Coward]

On my keyboard (Brazilian ABNT2 layout) I can press Ctrl-= (shift+the equal sign would be the plus sign), and it works just fine.

Ever tried that?

Transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the release notes suggest that transparent windows in XUL are possible, no example is available except this one:
"-chrome http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=1119 01" (use that to start deer park to see what I mean).

It bothers me that this is (one of ?) a very unusable feature.
When I want a transparent window I expect it to have full controls - yet this is not supported. When transparency is enabled 'chrome' - ie the controls - dissapear with it.
Worse yet, real content disappears too.
Thus, a window on top of your desktop with only the content of a webpage displayed, but no background, is not possible.

So it seems that some of the solutions/features are more of a "checklist" nature ('check: we have transparency') than of a practical, real-life nature.
My critique is that it should be presented as such, so other developers are triggered to jump in and "fix" it.

can I do this in firefox now?

[_Qiang_]

a new tab opened by following a link from parent tab should inherite the parent tab's font size

Catching up with Opera?

[TeXMaster]

> Fast back (and forward)

Oh, looks like they're catching up with Opera, finally. Wonder when will it be that they'll catch up with the download manager too?

Re:Catching up with Opera?

[erunaheru]

I think this is one of the biggest areas for improvement with firefox. if they would just support queing and a maximum simultaneous downloads option it would be better than anything i've tried (although i've never used opera)

Re:Catching up with Opera?

[jp10558]

Mmm, I don't think Opera supports queuing. That's why I use GetRight. I think download management belongs in a download manager, so I can close my browser without losing my downloads.

Old

[Just-some-person]

Deer Park Alpha 1 was released like a week and a half ago.

Re:Tabs: go extension hunting

[Tumbleweed]

I recently replaced Tabbrowser Extensions with TabMix, and while the immense slowdown when typing in forms is gone, a new problem of crashing upon opening the browser from a link from another application has now appeared.

Other than the crashing, Tab Mix is great. :)

Looks Good

[blackpaw]

On Windows 2000;
Pros:
- Overall much faster, page seem to load and render much quicker
- The forward/back feature works really well, pages snap up from history, no more waiting for them to load before the browser seeks to the history pos in the page
- The DOM inspector loads much faster
- I like the new icon much better
- No crashes so far :)

Cons:
- Most of my extensions no longer work - to be expected though.
- Nothing else so far

Re:Looks Good

[spectre_240sx]

Unfortunately, that new icon isn't going to be around forever. That's the icon used for unofficial builds of the firefox browser. It's a trademark thing.

Re:Looks Good

[blackpaw]

Bummer - ah well

Re:Tabs: go extension hunting

[kbrosnan]

First make sure that you uninstalled Tabbrowser Extensions. If that does not work the a manual clean up of the extension is needed.
http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/doc/installation.html .en#uninstall
or
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_extensions# Uninstalling_manually

Acid2 test

[RC_Car]

It seems nice, but when will the Gecko engine pass the Acid 2 test?

faster on linux

[matt me]

If you're in Linux, this build is worth getting, WHATEVER it may break, because it finally renders pages as they download. Firefox 1.0 was impossibly slow.

I was hoping for some long-needed features such as cross-session downloads. Single-window mode is more reliable. Bookmarks are better though. And XUL error pages work. So that's two less extensions I need.

Re:Graphical History, how to start

[jesser]

Extension writers don't have to parse history.dat. They can access History using RDF (example 1, example 2).

Re:Graphical History, Already started

[kbrosnan]

It figures that Ben Goodger blogs about this very idea the day I post this.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/008250 .html
http://www.bengoodger.com/software/mb/xtech2005/th umbshist2.png
http://everybreathdeathdefying.com/blog/archives/0 00100.html

5, Insight-full

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if telling the truth is trolling, then call me Mr. Troll.