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

Nice.

[illtron]

Can anybody remind me what the name of the extension is that lets you use your other extensions? I can't stand that it won't let you use them by default until they've been updated.

Re:Nice.

[Associate]

http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/b uildid/nightly.html
That should do it.

Re:Nice.

[tgd]

I only had three come up as not working (GreaseMonkey, Google and FoxyTunes). All three worked fine when I went into the install.rdf in my profile directory for each one and set the max-version to 1.4+

It took about thirty seconds total. I don't have any GreaseMonkey scripts installed right now but Google Toolbar and FoxyTunes both seem to work fine.

Re:Nice.

[nogginthenog]

I've had luck unzipping the extension, changing the version number in the XML file and re-zipping.

Re:Nice.

[appavi]

You can use Greasemonkey 06.2 beta for Firefox 1.5.

more details in Greasemonkey blog
http://greaseblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/firefox-15- compatible-greasemonkey.html

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

[KiloByte]

If there are security updates, the software update should notify the user ASAP. Not everybody checks a news site that would mention FF updates.

1.5beta2 is not a security update -- it's a preview of the next major release. Not stable yet (well, unless you compare it to IE/AOL Netscape/...) and not considered to be fit for the general public.
It's a release for developers and adventureous users.

Copy & Paste sorted?

[LiquidCoooled]

1.5 suffers from some serious C&P bug in windows where it won't let me use the clipboard under various circumstances.

anyone know if its been rectified?

Re:Copy & Paste sorted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, noticed the fix with the first b-2 code that appeared on the nightly branch builds a few days ago.

Re:Copy & Paste sorted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because Linux is well known for its excellent clipboard support.

Re:Copy & Paste sorted?

[flithm]

Linux clipboarding is leaps and bounds ahead of Windows. It's really only people who don't understand the Linux clipboard that complain about it.

This is actually one of the reasons I loathe using Windows now. I can't believe people would put up with its absolutely horrible cut 'n paste support.

A funny point of note is that I, like many people, complained about the Linux clipboard when I was going through the steps of switching away from Windows. It was foreign and didn't act as I expected a clipboard should. But that quickly faded away once I figured out how it works and realized how much better it is.

The only annoying thing is you can't cut and paste between X and pure console mode without using something like xclip. But since Windows can't even do pure console mode (while at the same time doing graphical mode) this isn't realy a point against Linux cut 'n paste.

Anyway... all you've got to do is wrap your head around the fact that X has two (or more) cut and paste modes (depending on what WM / desktop system you use). The standard mode allows selection of text and immediate pasting of text using the middle mouse button. This is so much more convenient than Windows cut 'n paste for most things!

The second mode is basically an exact copy of how Windows cut 'n paste works. Highlight, use the copy command, then use the paste command. This is useful for situations where you want to paste over some text that needs to be highlighted (which obviously thwarts the first cut 'n paste mode).

Also note that having two separate modes is also a god send. Sometimes it's very useful to have two selection buffers.

Some WM's have an implementation of their own cut 'n paste method too. KDE has klipper which is a great tool. It can be configured to work a number of different ways, but essentially it keeps a history of your copy commands so you have access to many of them at any given time.

It's been a long time since Windows had a leg up on Unix style clipboards.

I can't speak for OSX since I've never really used it, but I assume it has some handy things that are either on par with or better than a standard *nix/*BSD setup.

Re:Copy & Paste sorted?

[Blakey Rat]

You might have a point with text, but there are other things you can clip other than text. In OS X and Windows, you can copy parts of a Windows Media Player movie and paste them into Powerpoint. You can copy your Powerpoint slide and paste it into Word. You can copy 15 non-contiguous cells from a Excel spreadsheet and paste them into Notepad.exe... and all of these do exactly what you expect. On a Mac, you can do all the same operations... you copy Excel cells and paste into TextEdit, and it works. MacOS has had a clipboard that could handle all these operations since 1988-90ish, and Windows has since 1995.

Linux is getting better, but you still find that copy and paste does not do what you expect.

The only people who claim that Linux clipboarding is better are the people like you who, apparently, never copy anything other than text. There's a whole world of data out there, text is just a small part of it.

Re:Copy & Paste sorted?

[Ayende Rahien]

I copy & paste to the shell all the time, it's the right mouse click that does the trick.
But you need to enable the quick edit mode.

So what's new

[Cardinal Biggles]

Forgive my ignorance. I have not yet looked into what Firefox 1.5 is all about.

Why no 1.1 - 1.4 ? What's the major-but-not-major-enough-for-a-2.0 newness in this?

The changelog only lists the changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2 which is not very informative.

Re:So what's new

[morgan_greywolf]

The obvious answer: It's a beta. So if you want to test it and don't mind a few bugs, random crashes, etc. then you might want to try it. If you need something that's solid and stable enough for everyday browsing, continue to use the 1.0.x series.

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:So what's new

[Cally]

Personally speaking, I find the automatic updates rocks like a Japanese death metal group doing a Peel session. The beta checks for updates daily, and picks up a new nightly build every day as far as I can see... my Firefox install is never more than 24 hours old. Suck it up, Microsoft ;)

Re:So what's new

[richwklein]

Originally this was suppose to be a 1.1 release, but since there had been almost a year worth of development on the Gecko rendering engine between 1.0 and this release, they decided to bump the version to 1.5. They've also included a lot more features than originally planned for. Such as the new software update.

Re:So what's new

[Dehumanizer]

From my experience, the 1.5 betas are at least as stable, if not more stable, than the 1.0.x versions.

I've been using only 1.5b1 since it was out (and 1.5b2 since today), and they've been great - stable, visibly faster, and (few people talk about this one, but I love it) you can reorder open tabs by dragging them. :)

Re:So what's new

[salimma]

You're on the nightly build, not the beta. I was on beta1 for a few days, never noticed any update, so I replaced it with the latest nightly build from branch (not trunk).

The beta release only updates to other beta releases, I think.

Flash fixed?

[NineNine]

Could anybody using this please tell me if they've fixed the (currently non-working) ability to disable all Flash? In IE, I just uninstall the Active X control. In Firefox, you can disable it, but it doesn't work. I certainly hope that they're fixing bugs before adding more features...

Re:Flash fixed?

[Xabraxas]

You're looking for Flashblock.

Just wait a couple more hours.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta 3 should be out with the security fixes in just a couple of hours.

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...

[MightyYar]

Users (at least of Windows) are not so concerned about standards - web developers are. The fewer differences between browsers, the less work they have to do and the more "advanced" parts of the specs they can use. Web developers write the standards, not users, so they obviously would stand to benefit the most.

Personally, I think users were best off in the Netscape 4.x days when there was healthy competition in the browsers, and none of this fancy flash/pop-up/floating box crap. The web was all about content (or lack thereof). Ah, well, the almighty dollar...

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...

[csirac]

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.

"money and resources" aren't everything. MS can't afford to make radical changes in IE, in fact they've absolutely struggled to make _ANY_ changes at all compared to FF which has ejoyed a fairly nimble development process so far. I will speculate that the reasons include: a crusty code-base which hasn't seen much work since the Netscape war (compared to the Everything Is New (tm) enthusiasm FF developers seem to have), and a fear that any real change will break things in new and horrible ways (crusty code tends to be like this - if IE is "secure" it's only because it has stagnated so much; touching it significantly may result in a whole slew of new holes to plug).

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?

Both sides were guilty of making up and/or bastardising standards. Most people are angry at MS's "abuse" of standards to achieve standardised functionality in a non-standard way. What you've just described there from the Mozilla page seems to be a new feature that has no standard to go by.

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)?

The w3 and other standards bodies for that matter, aren't perfect. For example I've read plenty of threads about SVG (Scaled Vector Graphics) to get the impression that some standards are written before the technology they describe is even useful let alone implemented... standards writers require collaboration with implementors and users (or at least, an understanding of the users). But it does depend on which standards body you're talking about... they're all guilty of something, it seems (ITU, IETF, etc).

Re:Killing Karma...

[esme]

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.

IE is insecure mostly because of Microsoft's philosophy, not because of development resources. Public statements and publicity stunts to the contrary, Microsoft is more interested in building and maintaining their monopoly, adding new features, etc. than providing a secure browser (or OS, for that matter).

And furthermore, not even FF adheres only to the standards, as outlined in the paragraph that speaks of the w3

First, the whole standards process assumes that, in addition to supporting the standards, implementors will also support non-standard new features. These new features are supposed to be tried out in practice, and then submitted to the next version of the standard when all the kinks are worked out. When there are multiple implementations, and one of them gets picked for the standard, you're supposed to implement the new version.

Microsoft's problem isn't that they added non-standard features. Their problem is that they used non-standard features to tie web pages to IE, and failed to fix broken or incomplete implementations of standards. This combined with IE's massive market share made a lot of people develop non-standard websites that only worked with IE.

-esme

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?

List of improvements in Firefox 1.5 Beta 2

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/1.5 b2.html

Re:no mention of my favorite bug

[Associate]

Wipe your other hand off and type with both hands.

Re:Incremental Update

[dumdumdum]

Yes incremental update does actually work. If you skip an update or 2, at the time of update it will download all those incremental updates on after the other. If the total size of updates is greate than some specified value it will download the full update

Re:Crahes...alot

[Linker3000]

Funny old world innit: I've had the beta on my laptop for about a month and it's been working fine even when kludged to run adblock, forecastfox and googlebar. The only weird thing I found was that typing an apostrophe would sometimes fire up the find (CTRL-F) feature.

They've got to sort this out before the final

[tritonic]

I'm looking forward to the new version as much as anyone, but I do have some concerns about the amount of unfixed bugs in the codebase. How does a bug like Bug 115174 get overlooked for three and a half years? A quote from the comments:

...the form may be being sumbitted again when "Save Page As, HTML Only" is selected. What really concerns me about this is that, on a less smart web page, a user's payment may be submitted twice, when all the user wanted to do was save a copy of the payment receipt. This is more than just annoyance, it could cause people's checks to bounce unexpectedly.

I know this has happened to several people (me included - luckily I managed to cancel the transaction in time). Surely the mozilla guys have a responsibility to fix this one...?

Memory hog?

[Antifuse]

Have they at least fixed the problem where if you use Windows FF in a "one window" mode (tabbed browsing, all new windows in new tabs instead) and leave it open for a couple days, the memory never seems to get released? That's my only real quibble with Firefox (and it doesn't prevent me from using it, I just have to shut down FFox every morning when I get to work and restart it). It's kinda concerning to have one tab open, look into process explorer and see the FF is using 180mb of RAM.

Re:Memory hog?

[fool36]

I would love to see this cleared up. I am told that people don't normally leave a browser open for any extended period of time, but i do - and have to restart FF every 3 days or so.

I blame Microsoft for creating an OS that is now stable for days and even weeks at a time.

Firefox Plugin Management

[LiquidCoooled]

Firefox plugins (not Addins..) are the hidden automatic way to handle extra file extensions, and are similar to ActiveX plugins for IE.
You can remove the flash plugin fully without resorting to letting the Flash load and then hiding it from the DOM model (as flashblock does - i hate the "flash" flicker it does and would rather a broken box appeared instead, i never ever want or need flash...)

Plugins are listed in firefox by browsing to about:plugins
(a very nice report actually)

If you open about:config and change the setting "plugin.expose_full_path" to true, you can see where each plugin is located for removal.

To remove a plugin, you must delete it, or move it into a new folder.

I just removed the files:
NPSWF32.dll
flashplayer.xpt

All flash now comes up with the green jigsaw "click here to download the plugin" and doesn't even attempt to load.

Hope this helps :)

Plugins list and info: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/

Uninstalling Plugins help page: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/uninstall.html

newsreader?

[timeOday]

Is Mozilla's usnet news reader being updated at all? I'm still using the "suite." They still have it on their website, but I can't tell if the browser is kept up to date with firefox, and if the newsreader is updated at all.

Re:newsreader?

[twbecker]

If you mean the newsreader functionality in Thunderbird then no, not really. TB is a great mail client but the newsreader functionality is still pretty much an exact copy from the suite. The devs don't seem to place a lot of emphasis on enhancing it =/

Re:newsreader?

[twbecker]

Uhh, Thunderbird is bloated but the suite isn't? Seriously man lay off the crack.

Automatic update, in a few days?

[amrust]

I just now tried to force a manual update (using Beta 1 now), and it won't update. Why would waiting for the incrimental automatic update to kick in work in a few days, if asking manually right now will not?

Maybe they don't have the Beta 2 on the server that autoupdate looks at, or something. Probably to avoid congestion?

Bug-specific

[dmccarty]

Does anyone know what this bug means or what it solves?

New extension developer features: 310976 - Treat 1.5.* as 1.5.infinity.

(In this case, "inifinity" is 2,147,483,647 ;-)

Also, my favorite bug:

Linux-specific bugs: 287523 - [GTK] Insensitive (disabled) check/radio buttons can't be distinguished in some GTK themes.

I DON'T USE RADIO BUTTONS YOU INSENSITIVE, uh, oh wait nevermind.

If 1.5b1 is any indication...

[green pizza]

The memory issue seems to be improved, but not fixed. I upgraded from 1.0.2 to the nightly builds and most recently to 1.5b1. I use FF on Mac, Win, Linux, and Solaris. Performance of 1.5b1 is a bit better than 1.0.2 and memory usage is a bit better as well. With 1.0.2, leaving FF running with several tabs as you describe will easilly eat hundreds of MB after a few days of running. With 1.5b1 it's down to about 100 MB. Still too much, but slightly better.

I know it's a pipe dream, but I am hoping 2.0 will once and for all make the memory and CPU usage a good 33% lighter.

Re:magnet and ed2k links

[bonzooznob]

Testing... Try wrapping your links in: So, like:
Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 - Magnet Link
Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 - eDonkey 2000 Link
hope this helps

Re:Where's my update icon?

[skryche]

RFA!

“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.”

Don't forget SVG

[bigpat]

Yes, most of us have been getting along with Flash just fine for many years, but the open standard for Scalable Vector Graphics promises some really good graphical and animation capabilities without being under macromedia's control and offering an easier ways to integrate dynamic database driven content.

Firefox 1.5 will offer integrated support for at least a subset of the SVG standard. So, no longer will you have to download a plugin to see svg content and it will be viewable inline with html content on a web page. To me this is an often unheralded addition to Firefox 1.5 which could really be a market differentiator. So in this case, being one of the first to adopt an open standard that has the potential to add so much functionality can be of real benefit to both the product and user.

Re:Once again

[dirty]

It's a beta. It's not meant for general use. If there are security problems it's your own damn fault for using it.

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!

Where I work

[Mad Ogre]

We all use Firefox... We have no spyware problems. But since we are a computer shop, we make our bread and butter out of removing spyware from machines running IE. Firefox might not be the most secure browser out there, but it sure is a lot more so than IE. IE7 is just nasty.