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Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the kick-the-tires dept.

elfguygmail.com writes "Firefox 1.5 beta1 is out! It includes many new features including a new automatic update system, reworked options dialogs, faster browsing, new error pages, memory and stability updates. Get your beta at Mozilla.org."

9 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. Woohoo! by Tidal+Flame · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If they've really made it more stable and fixed the apparent memory leak, I'll be really happy. Firefox is great as it is, but it seems that if you leave it open for too long it starts to take up insane amounts of memory.

    1. Re:Woohoo! by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was actually giving this some thought the other day and perhaps firefox should use one of the C++ garbage collecting libraries. A webbrowser really just needs to be usable and low on memory, no crtical speed requirements as long as the UI is responsive, websites render quickly, and javascript interprets at decent speeds (none of which a garbage collector would slow down). Firefox developers could still focus on keeping the memory footprint down, but applying a garbage collector is a good solution because its unlikely they'll ever remove every memory leak. This would remove most of them, help detect others, and keep the remaining problems minimal.
      Regards,
      Steve

  2. I hope it will turn out more stable... by beeswax · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My employer forces us to use firefox at my job... The database front-end they had designed uses flash. Firefox segfaults quite often and the copy/paste buffer is always farked up. I really hope these issues have been taken care of :(

    If it were my choice at work, I'd use Opera.

  3. svg release schedule? by radarsat1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very cool that they have a new release out, I'll be downloading it soon.
    But I'm a little dissapointed it looks like the built-in SVG support isn't in there. Guess it's still alpha? (Haven't been following the Deer Park releases)
    I'm really looking forward to the day where I can actually do a site in SVG and be able to expect more than 2 or 3 people to be able to see it...
    And wow am I ever tired of struggling with the Flash IDE.

  4. GCC 4.01 by (1+-sqrt(5))*(2**-1) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Beautiful: Firefox' source finally builds with GCC4 out of the box; no mucking around necessary!

  5. Re:Fp by pomo+monster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So what, if the vast majority of websites don't bother styling them? Form controls can default to Aqua without compromising the spec. In other words, there's no need for controls to be ugly if ugliness isn't specified in the HTML, and even then, you can handle it the elegant and tasteful way:

    Some controls are going to naturally discard the Aqua look if you "fall off the cliff" by customizing the control to the point where the Aqua look can no longer be maintained, e.g., if you set the border and background of a button. Others, like checkbox, are going to refuse to "fall off the cliff" unless you explicitly turn off the -khtml-appearance property. The choice of when to disable the Aqua look is going to be chosen to match other browsers (and Internet Explorer in particular).

    Naturally, that's how WebKit behaves. Ugliness has no place on the Mac desktop, even on the web.

  6. inline-block? by Yjerkle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They've jumped up half a version and still no display:inline-block? Shouldn't they finish CSS 2.1 before they start on CSS 3? Every other major browser out there supports it, so it can't be that hard. Even IE, with it's dismal standards support, has inline-block.

  7. Re:Auto update! by Kichigai+Mentat · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Awesome - because we all know how well auto-updating stuff goes. Take Windows, for example! :P

    Well, as one who manages the family computer, which runs WinXP, AutoUpdate is actually pretty useful. I haven't had to install an update manually for quite some time.

    Seriously though, I can't wait until we get an OSX port that doesn't suck (Camino is okay, but what good is it if you can't use all the cool firefox extensions?).

    Well, as a Mac OS X user, I feel your pain. But, I'm wondering which parts suck for you? I have issues with page rendering. Look at these rendering jobs from the LiveJournal home page (be kind! this is hosted on my personal server box):

    • FireFox 1.0 (Sorry, but the "About" Dialogue blocks the effected text, so you'll have to trust me)
    • FireFox 1.5 Deer Park Beta 1 the distributed Mac OS X binary, not compiled from soruce
    • Camino 0.92 just for comparson
    • Opera 8.02 for Mac OS X
    • Safari 2 (And if you don't trust me, think about how many web browsers have a brushed metal GUI like that)
    This occurs on several pages, but the only one I could produce on-demand was the LiveJournal page. Note that this is the LiveJournal home page, not user pages, and contains relatively simple and stable code. Note that Safari and Opera read the pages perfectly fine, but all the Mozilla-based browsers (all versions), even Camino, can't render the page properly. And these problems are not always so minor. On occasion, text can continue right outside of the view (and scroll) of the window. Text boxes will end up with text no longer inline with the cursor, making editing and correcting typos virtually impossible.

    Any one else have this problem? I know it's not too isolated since I've had this happen on both installations of OS X 10.4 and even 10.3. Or are there other problems that I don't know about?

    --
    Rawr
  8. FireFox web page in IE by SnprBoB86 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I understand that IE isn't standards compliant, but it is dominant. As such, many people will be viewing the FireFox web site in IE. But IE doesn't render many of the FireFox site's pages correctly! Rounded corners don't work on every page and some pages (such as the "Mozilla FireFox 1.5 Beta 1 Release Notes" page) have much larger issues. However, IE renders the content at full width and FireFox leaves a substantial margin on either side (I have a wide screen display, I want to make use of it!).

    Blame Microsoft all you want, but this is inexcusable. If you want people to switch to FireFox, they need to believe FireFox is better. Seeing as most web sites are built for IE, users coming to FireFox's web site see a page that doesn't render correctly and they assume the makers of the page are to blame. Why would they blame IE? Every other page they go to renders just fine in IE.

    Since the same organization that made the page makes the software, it is conceivable that people would be turned away from FireFox on the assumption that people who produce broken web pages also produce broken programs.

    Whether the FireFox web site doesn't properly support IE out of laziness, or out of malice. It should be fixed.

    --
    http://brandonbloom.name