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Firefox 1.5 RC1 Released
jgaynor writes "The Firefox team took another step towards version 1.5 this morning as it made public release candidate 1 of it's popular browser. Users running 1.5 beta should have already received notice via an automated update dialogue box. New features include improved Pop-up blocking, enhanced automated update, better OS X support and faster back and forward page navigation buttons. A full list of features can be found in the release notes as well as the downloaded page." My copy is 24 seconds away from downloaded ;)
Help them out and file bug reports since it's a release candidate. If everyone just downloaded and said nothing bad about it since it's firefox, the final version may still have some nasty bugs in it.
They're working on the unglamorous speed improvements and stability for the most part. They're reworking the rendering engine to speed up drawing of pages and reducing memory usage and fixing incorrect handling of CSS and HTML. I think that's more important then a new whiz bang feature.
I prefer to use my short term memory to remember what the pages roughly look like since my memory is free and I don't have to upgrade it. And a phishing filter is only good for the user if it blocks every phishing scheme that will ever be created. Otherwise, they'll let their guard down over time and then get bit in the ass. A better solution may be to make the user that they are aware they're on a secure server and that the server address better match with the address in the address bar. That would be a good feature for firefox to...wait...
IE 7 has still pretty cool features, like adressbar spoofing, statusbar spoofing, domain spoofing, titlebar spoofing, SSL spoofing, keystroke sniffing, clipboard sniffing, Cross-Site-Scripting and, of course, remote code execution. No phishing filter will help you with that. In consequence, IE can only be safely used on a trusted intranet.
In contrary, Firefox can be used on the internet - which I consider as a standard feature that IE clearly lacks of.
My post wasn't meant to bash firefox. Seriously, I've never seen such hyper-sensitive people in my life. Not all, but most of the replies are just blind defenses of firefox.
Discussion about pros/cons of the browser will make it better. Saying IE sucks doesn't help FireFox improve, and it won't make FireFox beat IE 7 in the browser war. Stop being zealots and have an objective discussion. IE AND FireFox aren't perfect, get over it. How about try having a discussion on how to improve its functionality instead of just complaining about any flaw you find with IE.
It blows my mind that so many of you initially just attack IE, instead of talking about other things that FireFox could to be better. The glass is half full not half empty. You will never win market share just by saying the other guy sucks. I want FireFox to continue to innovate and add new features, not just "nice" things like auto-updates. At this point, security holes are a rampant in all browsers, and that feature is a given to have in any browser.
Real quick, I was speaking to the functionality with the browser, not the engine. I believe they are all fast enough for the average user, and that to win the mindshare of end-users you need to have the "features" that impress and make browsing easier. I agree with the format statements, but that isn't (history shows) relevant in winning a browser war. Plug-ins just aren't as good as native features (memory leaks, stability/crashing, integration issues, etc.).
In anycase, instead of just saying IE sucks, does anyone have any ideas to improve FireFox? The best one I saw was the timeline comment, that FF 1.5 won't be up against IE 7. I you are right.
What really gets me about these "browser wars" is that so many people think it's a good idea if one brower wins. It will be VERY bad if Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, or whatever other browser becomes the one most people use. The only good outcome is where there are at least three competing browsers (Firefox, IE, and Opera or Safari should do the trick), or we'll continue to have the situation where lazy web developers test their stuff with one browser, and assume it's okay, because "it's the browser most people use".
</rant>
IE7 is also not yet available to the public in any form and probably won't be available as a finished product until Firefox 2 is out (or at least well on it's way). So I wouldn't worry about Firefox losing out to IE7 just yet.
And even if it does, it has still been successful in giving Microsoft the impetus to a) release an up to date browser, and b) follow web standards. As a web developer, I don't really care if Firefox never gets above 10% market share as long as its existence is enough to keep the 80+% market share holder on its toes.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
If Firefox proponents don't begin to mention software freedom, there will be another reason for MSIE 7 users to stick with MSIE and not download the latest version of Firefox. After all, on Microsoft Windows it is easier to use MSIE than to download and install a replacement web browser. Microsoft can implement all sorts of features that Firefox has today or will get soon, but Firefox respects the user's freedoms to run, inspect, copy, and modify the software and MSIE doesn't. It would be a shame to let this advantage go as if it is less important than feature lists. Paying attention to software freedom is what got us the community that has given us so much. As the FSF has warned us:
Digital Citizen
Oh, you men that running the update from 1.5b2 caused:
1. A ~600K update patch to be downloaded.
2. Then upon restart caused a 6MB download to update to 1.5rc1
then it looped back to step 1.
I cancelled and downloaded the 5MB installer.
I guess auto-update, can't.
Because the number one thing people have harped on about since Gecko was first open-sourced is how it's the greatest thing to ever happen to web standards. Now along comes a test designed to highlight flaws in standards support, Konqueror passes, Safari passes, even iCab passes, but Firefox not only doesn't pass, but there are no plans to make it pass for the next version (or even the version after that, IIRC).
If people have been believing the standards compliant rhetoric that Mozilla advocates have been pushing for the past seven years, then I don't blame them for being surprised when the only mainstream browser that isn't kicking their arse in standards compliance is Internet Explorer.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha