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 ;)

Comments

1.5 Beta 2?

[aussie_a]

I got the Beta 2. Can I upgrade via it's upgrade function? If so, how? I see a button for "Upgrade History" but none for "Check Now".

IE 7 vs. Firefox 1.5

[CDPatten]

IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs. For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good.

I wish Firefox added more cutting edge stuff. MS will win the war if this is what is going to compete against IE 7.

Maybe in the final release we will see some better features added.

Re:IE 7 vs. Firefox 1.5

[ScootyPuffJr]

You make some good points, but let's not think Microsoft innovated here! That would be news.

Omniweb is one of those innovators -- you can see the image of the tabs there, as is Shiira (tab exposé)

Re:IE 7 vs. Firefox 1.5

[n0-0p]

The tab thing sounds interesting, so I'll give it a try and see what I think. I wouldn't use the IE anti-phishing system because it sends every URL to MS' servers for validation. I don't consider myself paranoid, but I'm not comfortable with handing over my entire browsing history to a third party.

In terms of cutting edge stuff I'd really like to see IE support SVG, XForms, more complete CSS, and other Web 2.0 features. I guess we just have different views and priorities on that one.

Re:IE 7 vs. Firefox 1.5

[Scoria]

IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs.

Firefox is ultimately a lightweight browser that can be easily expanded to suit an end-user's individual preferences. There are freely available extensions that will convert Firefox into the most feature-rich browser imaginable.

For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good.

It's funny that you would mention it. The current development builds of Mozilla Thunderbird actually have a "scam detection" filter, even though I feel that such technology does often add a false sense of security to the equation. Maybe it will be shared with an upcoming Firefox build.

I wish Firefox added more cutting edge stuff.

This subject has been beaten to death here at Slashdot, but I'm afraid that the Trident rendering engine is still many miles behind the competition. Gecko is definitely cutting edge by comparison, even though I understand that the Microsoft team is striving to improve their engine.

MS will win the war if this is what is going to compete against IE 7.

If there is indeed a browser war happening, Microsoft certainly has the advantage. For most people, after all, the preinstalled Internet Explorer is synonymous with "the Internet." However, I don't believe that Firefox 1.5 will be up against Internet Explorer 7.0. Instead, it's likely that Firefox 2.0 ("The Ocho") will be released alongside Vista, and that they will directly compete for the market.

Re:IE 7 vs. Firefox 1.5

[Lomby]

Firefox 1.5 has one of the coolest features you can imagine: SVG.

Everything is well integrated with XUL/Javascript.

This opens the door to many applications that were not possible before without resorting to Java/Flash/ActiveX/...

Think of a Gantt chart editor in your browser.
Think of a graphical editor in your browser.
Think of a CAD in your browser.

SVG has the potential to move the kind of operations you can perform in a browser to the next level.

AutoUpdate Issues

[Sv-Manowar]

I've been running 1.5 beta 2 since it was released, and for some reason the autoupdate to 1.5RC1 got stuck in a loop where beta 2 would just keep downloading and applying the upgrader, without actually having any effect. AutoUpdate is one of the key new features in 1.5 to keep users browsers up to date (and hence, patching holes rapidly, keeping FireFox's security edge over IE).

Hopefully this is just the result of issues in beta 2 and older profiles, rather than an indicator of problems in the AutoUpdate code.

Pop-up blocking

[Rinnt]

improved Pop-up blocking

I am *really* looking forward to pop-up blocking improvements. It seems that when I first started using firefox (back in the early days) it caught the vast majority of pop-ups. That situation seems to have gotten worse lately. For example, I visit a certain guitar tab web site. Let's say I want to view 10 different tabs at once... using Firefox's tabs, I just click away. Unfortunately, this also means I'm greated with 10 new pop ups. This happens every time and has really brought back the days before firefox (and no pop-up blocker).

problems w/ first 1.5 beta

[AgentPhunk]

My experience with the first release of 1.5 was good overall, with the exception of one bug that forced me to roll back to the stable 1.0.7. For some reason, some hyperlinks would 'crash' a tab and the page on that tab would be all grey, nothing else. I couldn't close out the tab and it just stayed there until I finally closed out the entire browser window. I could continue to open other tabs and work, but I usually keep Firefox going for a week+ with all of the websites I've been visiting in tabbed windows, and having 'dead' tabs got really frustrating. (not to mention that, if I really wanted to get to that website, I had to open up *shudder* IE.) anyone else have this problem (and/or do you know if it was addressed in RC1? I didn't see anything specific in the release notes.

General comments...

[lpangelrob]

I generally do not test software until the release candidate stage, so this is my first experience with 1.5. Here are my thoughts:

1. Nicer looking menus. A nice little visual bonus.
2. Half my extensions are busted. TargetAlert, Flashblock, SessionSaver... those are the three most important disabled ones right now. Fortunately, it appears I no longer need SlashFix or Tab Mix (try dragging the tabs around).
3. Finally, I can update more than one extension at a time.
4. What's with the OS X-like preferences panel? It seems as though in the last year, more Windows applications have been going in that direction.
5. Haven't tested out the memory leak issue yet. Leave Gmail open for a night, you'll see what I mean.

Firefox & OpenDocument

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Firefox 1.5 (or later) be able to read the OpenDocument files?

Such ability would make much easier the introduction of OpenDocuument-ready apps (i.e. OpenOffice 2.0).

Is there any technical problem to create such feature/extension?

Here's a small problem...

[WWWWolf]

This is kind of off-topic but also very much on topic, because it does involve firefox update.

Does anyone know how to make SVG files, you know, scalable?

If I put images to web pages with <img> tag, and specify width and height, the image gets scaled.

But if I do what is recommended for SVG - that is, I create a PNG rendering of the image for backwards compatibility, then use <object data="foo.svg" ...><image src="foo.png" .../></object>, with width and height specified on both img and object tags, I get a properly scaled PNG image in Firefox 1.0 (which can't interpret the object type in question, so it falls back to the <img> tag, it as it should), and an improperly scaled SVG image in Firefox 1.5 and all other SVG browsers. Some SVG-enabled browsers (MSIE with AdobeSVG, FF1.0 with Inkscape plugin) show original-size SVG images, FF1.5 seems to be really nice and shows scrollbars on the image.

I tried making a small SVG file which uses <foreignObject> to scale the picture, but it didn't seem to work at all with SVG images in FF1.5, plus, it was an awful hack!

So what's supposed to be the web-standards-compliant trick of placing and arbitrary-sized SVG image on a web site, then having the browser scale the frigging scalable vector graphic file to the specified width and height?

I've looked around everywhere, nobody seems to know - anybody here know?

Re:If you're gonna download it

[LiquidCoooled]

Theres an annoying bug that prevents the status bar from displaying the link I'm hovering over.
I already have the tickbox for "Change status bar text" unticked - ie javascript should not change the status bar.

If the site includes onmouseover type events (even with simple return false code) then it cancels the javascript display but the URL never displays.

Its damn annoying.

and no, installing greasemonkey and using the noblindlink type scripts don't work now because nothing can touch the document.on* events (due to the new handling of the DOM within FF (They can however remove the on* events from the A elements, so is a partial fix)

Its been in bugzilla since 2000, what chance I can have it fixed before this release?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40838

(not as a direct link...)

All I want is...

[frankcow]

1. Plug that stupid memory leak that has FireFox occupying 175MB of RAM after a few hours, and pushing me towards Opera
2. Hurry up and release Minimo 1.0!!!