Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Released

Anonymous Cow writes "Almost a month after the release of Firefox 1.5 beta 1, the second beta of Firefox 1.5 has been released. Firefox 1.5b2 can be downloaded from Mozilla.org. A changelog outlining the changes in this release is also available. The official announcement is over at MozillaZine." From the announcement: " This release does not contain any major new features since Beta 1. Improvements to automated update system, Web site rendering and performance, along with several security fixes are included in this release. Beta 1 users that want to help test software update, should wait for the automatic update to be triggered sometime in the next few days. The incremental update from Beta 1 to Beta 2 is 700K bytes."

Comments

Killing Karma...

[DoubleDangerClub]

I have a topic to debate, Standards.
If Firefox does get "Standards" in place, what really makes them good at all? This point is not made out of ignorance, but true question.
Firefox proposes that everyone adhere to the Standards of the W3, but say Safari and IE decide, "Ok, let's do it." Then what really sets any of them apart (other than Safari being Mac only)?
Because if it just comes down to a secure and fast browser, MS has much more money and resources to make this come true than FF, I believe, let me know where I'm wrong.
And furthermore, not even FF adheres only to the standards, as outlined in the paragraph that speaks of the w3 (do a find for 'w3') ---> Standards?

My favorite quote on there is: "Keep in mind that this is not yet part of any W3C or other official standard. At this time it is necessary to bend the rules in order to have full keyboard accessibility."
But isn't this what MS did long ago to make the better browser experience over NS?

Anyway, I don't mean to trash on FF at all, but I just wonder, who really wants the Standards implemented (I actually do), and then what happens after that? How do we get better dev tools and code to use in our web-apps (the w3 doesn't seem on top of new tech)?

Re:Killing Karma...

[X_Bones]

The "Web standards" you're talking about would allow any (standards-compliant) browser to render any page in the exact same way. No more JavaScript hacks, no more broken CSS implementations. It's more for Web developers than actual end users, though of course end-users would benefit from not having to use a certain browser for a certain site.

What would then differentiate Web browsers from one another would be their interface and feature set; e.g., some would have tabbed browsing while some wouldn't, some would offer BitTorrent integration, some wouldn't, etc.

Re:Killing Karma...

[i23098]

If Firefox does get "Standards" in place, what really makes them good at all?

If televison makers could adhere to a standard so one could see any thing broadcasted in any tv then what's the point of having several tv makers?

Re:So what's new

[I confirm I'm not a]

Yeah, I'm a regular FF v1.0.7 user - do I "upgrade" or not?

No. Well, it depends. You might want to test 1.5 to support development, or because it's got features (eg. SVG) which 1.0.7 doesn't have. But if none of these appeal - stick with what you've got.

Incidentally, I'm using 1.5b1, and it seems to work well. But I'm a serial upgrader ;-)

Re:Nice.

[jeffphil]

It's called having options.

Why not make it configurable, then if an extension breaks I can manually disable it.

Or at least give me the option of a context menu on a disabled extension to let me manually re-enable one that was auto-disabled.

It's freaking annoying right now.

Re:Once again

[Kelson]

A BitTorrent client built into a browser? That's the craziest thing I've heard since--

Oh, wait, I'm posting this using Opera.

A BitTorrent client built into a browser? That's a great idea!