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Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released

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."

20 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah! by OctoberSky · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah! New error pages! Finally no more of that 404 bullshit.

    1. Re:Yeah! by Seumas · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, they said NEW ones.

      I would suspect they've introduced new errors, entirely! Maybe some 700s, 800s.. maybe even some googols!

      Since I'm not going to install it on my mac, someone want to post screenshots of the new screens? Please tell me they're more informative (for unsophisticated users) but not mimics of MSIE.

  2. 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. Re:Woohoo! by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately garbage collection is not a cure-all for memory leaks; the programmer(s) still must take care to ensure that references to memory-consuming objects are removed when no longer needed. This can be a nontrivial task e.g. in a complex application where state is shared among multiple threads and certain corner case situations blur who is responsible for reference clean-up.

      Bugs is bugs!

      --

      There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
  3. Watch Out Extensions Break by Blahbooboo3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Warning, seems like most extensions won't work from 1.0x to 1.5beta1..

  4. 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.

  5. Re:new error pages! by Seumas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, whatever. You say that now, but I bet you were one of those jerks hating on Network Solutions for making "new error pages" last year, weren't, you?

  6. Extensions by 2MuchC0ffeeMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So far the only extension that works is the gmail notifier. Not even the all-in-one mouse gestures works... I'm patient, but will all of the developers make and re-make their extensions for every version?

    I smell a need for backward compatibility

    --
    Runnin' On Empty .... I'm Still Alive
  7. Firefox 1.5 installation directions by mdew · · Score: 5, Informative

    When installing Firefox 1.5

    (1) Backup your old Firefox 1.0 profile
    (2) Start with a clean profile, its best to use a clean profile
    (3) Update your extensions
    (4) If the extensions still complain, try this following the directions from this link

    --
    http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/
  8. 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.

  9. Funny... by VinodTandon · · Score: 5, Funny

    For the hell of it I clicked on view source on the provided link...

    This was a comment in the code:

              Note to Editors of this Document!

              I have meticulously repaired the indentation here. DO NOT OPEN THIS
              DOCUMENT IN A WYSIWYG EDITOR OR (in the words of Robert DeNiro) I
              WILL BRING YOU DOWN! I WILL BRING YOU DOWN TO CHINATOWN!

                -Ben

    nice.
    -Vinod

  10. 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.

  11. Re:Deer Park !!!!!!!!!! by Dread+Pirate+Shanks · · Score: 5, Informative

    If they can get it to be as fast as Opera's cached pages, they'll really have something there. Going back and forth in Opera is almost entertaining, it's so damn fast.

  12. Back by TopSpin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Faster back and forward means better performance...

    Nice. Too bad its taken over 11 years for someone to optimize this in a relevant browser.

    I'm not a browser developer so I've always wondered why browsers do not simply re-render what has already been cached when 'back' is used. I hit 'back' and I observe network activity even when the page is entirely 100% cacheable content. The browser is probably playing with If-Modified-Since... I'd rather it just render what's cached especially when, between the time the page was first rendered and the time I hit 'back' the network flakes out and, rather than simply rendering what is already faithfully stored on my local disk, the browser hangs!

    It's not just inconvenient. It's wrong in principle; 'back' should be 'back to precisely what I received previously', not 'attempt to re-get whatever now appears at the previous URL.' If I want the page refreshed, I will use the provided 'refresh' button, mkay? Thanks.

    There's probably some profoundly crucial and subtle reason for all this and I've foolishly revealed my ignorance. Apply the necessary flames, but only if you have credible answers.

    --
    Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
  13. 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
  14. Doesn't Fix Splitting Absolutely Positioned Frames by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, this still doesn't fix bug #154892: "Splitting Absolutely positioned frames not implemented - Missing second page of content when printing or print previewing this site"

    This bug prevents many web sites from printing in any useful respect from Mozilla browsers.

    Its existence keeps me from rolling out Firefox as the default. It probably keeps any organization that frequently prints web pages from considering Firefox.

    But what really irks me is that this bug has existed since 2002!. The bug has been duplicated in dozens and dozens of bug reports. It has at least 70 votes in Bugzilla. Yet no one has fixed it, and there is NO INDICATION that it will be fixed in the foreseeable future, yet it directly affects the user's browsing experience.

    The history and severity of this bug does not reflect well on the Mozilla browser or its open source development model. NOTE: I am actually, personally, quite impressed with the Mozilla project, but someone who wants an excuse to banish free software might start with something like this.

    Finally, as a Firefox user, a personal plea: Somebody, please fix this! Please?

    For more information:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15489 2

  15. State. by abulafia · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's not just inconvenient. It's wrong in principle; 'back' should be 'back to precisely what I received previously', not 'attempt to re-get whatever now appears at the previous URL.' If I want the page refreshed, I will use the provided 'refresh' button, mkay? Thanks.

    So, the big deal here is maintaining consensual state. I'm sure you know the basics here. Best practice is to POST when changing state on the server, and GET when reading. But, not everone does that. And it also took a long time to come up with that simple rule. The upshot is that when using browser based C/S apps, there is no good way to tell if the last action changed the state of whatever it is you're looking at. (For a simple example, think of confirming a bank transfer, and hitting back from the "it worked" page.) And even the POST means change rule doesn't always work or apply. Good app design has to play a role, but a browser has no idea if what is going on with the server.

    There are other reasons why back can't always be exactly "what you got a page ago", but the above is the main killer (from the perspective of what I do, at least). Developers can make this better by playing tricks with the last-modified header and whatnot, but you're either going to sometimes get broken info or at least do a HEAD when going back, take your pick.

    It is notable that the whole AJAX obsession usually completely kills the back button, and many web developers are very hot on the idea. If global state, session, and sometimes transaction can be bound that much more tightly, it does make life easier for a coder, at the expense of some great client side functionality. (Again, depending on how you think of it.)

    Doesn't mean I'm not using XMLRPC - I don't mind bragging that we were doing some of this a few years ago. Having a community to trade ideas with kicks ass, and I've learned a lot from other's experimentation. But we shouldn't lose track of basics, like "the browser is not just a window frame; inbuilt functionality is important and if you make your own back buttons, you're missing the point."

    --
    I forget what 8 was for.
    1. Re:State. by rastos1 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Use the approach that is used in my company:

      Developers: Do you want to use approach A or B?
      Sales: Both! And make it configurable!

  16. Re:Woohoo! - Not a troll by coolsva · · Score: 5, Informative
    Right on the mark. I have been using FF since version 0.6 or so and spreading the word to all people I meet. At that time and all the way till version 1.0, I accepted most bugs/performance issues as beta related. But at version 1.06 if I still have random performance problems, memory hogging. Also, IMHO, I see a lot of arrogance among the developers/supporters. Personally, I want a browser that works well, is fast and supports all sites. IE also does satisfy all my needs but is full of exploits. I recently downloaded Opera to try this past month and there is no looking back. Sure, some features like adblock, flashblock, 'images from originating server' and most importantly extensions/plugins are missing, but guess what, I can live with that. All these latest greatest features we keep talking about are not really revolutionary, they have been implemented in other browsers (including opera)

    Well, there goes my karma, I WILL be modded as troll for this, but had to get it out