Firefox 1.5 RC2 Available

ltwally writes "Although not posted on the Mozilla website yet, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 is out. You can grab it here. As of right now, it is available for Linux (i686), Mac OS X and Windows. Happy updating!"

Comments

If you have 1.5 RC1...

[puppetman]

It will automagically do the update (after asking you first). Mine did about 3 hours ago.

My Help->About still says plain old 1.5, however.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[drdanny_orig]

Ah, so _that's_ what that was all about! Kewl!

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the same for me, but after the restart Slashdot's live bookmark wouldn't load...

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[varmittang]

Yeah, I got that update thing at about the same time. I there wasn't an anouncement of a new release, I was going to start thinking that FF's update utility got hacked into.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[gardyloo]

Did the same for me, but after the restart Slashdot's live bookmark wouldn't load...

    Yeah, that's called a "feature".

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[gregbains]

Mine didn't automatically do this, but a quick help->update and all sorted, thanks again Slashdot for keeping me up to date :)

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[haruchai]

Yup, mine did the update while I was reading the post about the new release candidate :^)

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[dyftm]

Or you can click Help>Check for updates to do it straight away.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Martin Blank]

It's new to 1.5, and is an attempt to improve office productivity.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

You have to run it as root or Administrator for that to work, though, and you'd be a pretty worthless person if you did that. Me? I just sudo emerge firefox, thank you very much.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine has the "Check for Updates..." menu disabled. Does this happen because I'm under Linux and Firefox has been installed on a /opt/ dir with root privileges?

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[rdoger6424]

Pardon my n00bness, but is there anyone who has installed it manually on OSX, and could you tell me how?

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[The_K4]

That would only work if you've added www-client/mozilla-firefox ~x66 to your package.keywords file or use sudo ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge firefox As it's not yet in the stable branch. Also right now the most recent testing is 1.5_rc1-r1 .

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[fm6]

I must have heard the term "automagically" a zillion times, but I still have no idea what it means.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[madprof]

It is a play on words. Something automatic that appears to be "magical".

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[octaene]

Yeah, I can find nothing in terms of version number that differentiates the RC2 version from the RC1 I was running, other than when you visit "about: " and click on the words Firefox 1.5, it takes you to an about page on the mozilla.org site that talks about RC2...

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[rcbarnes]

http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=firefox According to that, it's not available. Where did you get your package?

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately this update break the SwitchProxy extension which means I will have to revert back to RC1 or 1.0.7 if I want to be able to troll Slashdot.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[ikkonoishi]

Adblock works again!

Up until now it always had a blank list in the blockables.

I've been reinstalling Fx repeatedly thinking something was wrong with my install.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Yakman]

My Help->About still says plain old 1.5, however

I would assume that because this is a Release Candidate (that's what RC means). Essentially if there are no major issues they drop the "RC" bit from the package names etc and it is v1.5. Obviously there's a bit more to it than that (tagging a version in source control etc) but the rough idea is that the last RC without issues is the first release version without making any other changes that could introduce a regression bug.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

We are nerds, you will be assimilated!

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[rapidweather]

I have installed 1.5 RC2, and have the Slashdot RSS feed in my bookmarks toolbar. It works, and I navigated to this story, (via the rss feed), and now am posting. But! When I
tried to reply to this story directly, without using the rss feed to get here, the Quality
Feedback Agent popped up, and Firefox crashed!.
Here is the line in my rxvt: ./run-mozilla.sh: line 424: 1658 Segmentation fault "$prog" ${1+"$@"}
I am running my Automated Remaster script again on this build of my iso, (see screenshots)
of my Remaster of Knoppix Linux, since I did not have the ownerships set correctly on the /firefox directory. I had them root.root, and should have had root.staff. Btw, I put the
browsers in /usr/local/keepers (I know, that's silly) and have Flock, Firefox, Opera, and Thunderbird Mail there. Must have root.staff on (almost) all.
I had a "chrome registration" error pop up (twice) before Firefox would boot, so I copied
the /firefox directory to /home/knoppix and am running it from there with knoppix.knoppix ownerships. Now it is fine, but will run up another iso as mentioned above. I sorta doubt the Seg fault above was something I did, but one can never know on these things. I do have 7 RSS feeds in my toolbar, and they all work, including Slashdot.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Hao Wu]

Mine did too - a little too conveniently....

It happened so quickly, I clicked "OK" without thinking and it promptly quit, destroying a lengthy comment I was posting!

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is the funniest thing that I have every seen on /. and no I am not new here. Thanks - I needed that!

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[X0563511]

/. is hardly the place to stick bug reports...

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

1. Download the file here.
2. Open the .dmg file.
3. Drag Firefox to your Applications folder.

If you want to uninstall later, you just drag Firefox to the trash.

Installing and uninstalling works exactly that way for 99% of Mac apps.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[surendran]

what is that .mar file ???????///

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

What an incredibly detailed, yet still superfluous post.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[rapidweather]

Help -> About Mozilla Firefox should show Gecko/20051107 if you have 1.5 rc2.
That's the number for the linux version, I suppose it would be the same for others.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is interested in firefox! have a look they want to make a plugin for it
http://www.hendikins.id.au/screenshots/mozilla/mic rosoft-acknowledges-plugindoc.png

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[llefler]

And this is one of the few things I really like about my mac, once I figured out what it was doing. A very clean approach to adding/removing programs.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[The_K4]

Ok, I just put my foot in my mouth, i somehow missed seeing the unavaliable box and a lined it up with the testing. My mistake.

Re:If you have 1.5 RC1...

[rdoger6424]

Yeah. The link in the summary for OSX is really a piece of Pie/Crap/Cake/Semprini.
I think it was for the wrong OS. Thanks anyway.

load time

[khedron the jester]

Does it load any faster than FF 1.0.7?

Re:load time

[avkb03]

Modify your shortcut: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /Prefetch:1

Re:load time

[WiFiBro]

Yes to me that was the most noticable change. Especially the first time you run it is very fast. They also worked on the speed of going forward and backward.

Re:load time

[Ythan]

Debunked, but still a common misconception.

Re:load time

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, interesting. Does Linux have any form of prefetching for executables?

Re:load time

[diegocgteleline.es]

Wow, interesting. Does Linux have any form of prefetching for executables?

No. There're some hacks which will do it at boot time, but there's not any transparent prefetching mechanism as it exist on windows or mac os x. It's one of the missing pieces of the linux desktop - just my humble opinion....

Re:load time

[masklinn]

Not really, but it eats noticeably less RAM

Repeated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

My Firefox 1.5 beta keeps downloading updates. It's fone it 4 or 5 times in the last couple of days.

Does anyone know whether this is Mozilla testing the update system, actual repeated bugfixes, a bug, or just some nefarious scheme masterminded by Sony?

Re:Repeated updates

[NeoSkandranon]

No clue. I havent had any update download notices since RC2 hit just about five minutes ago.

Re:Repeated updates

[Morgon]

It is a bug in RC1 - the only "what's new" entry for RC2 is "several fixes to automated update system". I was getting the same thing on Beta 2 for RC1 - I eventually uninstalled Beta2 to install RC1 fresh.
The transition from RC1 to RC2 was smooth, however.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/1 .5.html

Re:Repeated updates

[kaptron]

What could Sony possibly have to do with this? Oh wait, just came across something called $sys$firefox_install...

/me runs as sharp objects are hurled in my direction

Re:Repeated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had to uninstall my current version to stop the repeating updates. The old version said Beta 2 in the title bar and the about-window.
When I finally installed RC2, the repeating updates stopped. And now I've noticed the following in Tools->Options->Advanced->Update->Show Update History:
"The update could not be installed (patch apply failed)".

So I guess the Beta 2 was causing all the problems I had.

Re:Repeated updates

[masklinn]

If you are using a Beta version (and not a Release Candidate), then it checks on the Beta/Dev branches, which means that it has a news version (new build) pretty much every day.

Try doing this: go to the config page (type about:config in the address bar), then search for "app.update" and set the values:

app.update.channel to release app.update.url to https://aus2.mozilla.org/update/1/%PRODUCT%/%VER SION%/%BUILD_ID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL% /update.xml app.update.details to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases /

That should do the trick and grab the updates from the Release files (aka stable branch) instead of the beta/dev files

Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

How come my Firefox installs on Ubuntu 5.10 contain weirdly illegible text? Like some kind of greyed/stippled Sanskrit characters. When I select (highlight) the text, or scroll it (by line) off then on the visible window area, becomes legibile. This started happening in Evolution, too. Not Mozilla or other apps. It started with my dist-upgrade to Ubuntu 5.10. I can't find any reference to others with this problem on the Web. What's going on?

Re:Fire---

[EnronHaliburton2004]

If I remember right, both Evolution and Firefox rely on GTK or Gnome libaries for the fonts & character sets. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Have you done any other updates recently?

Re:Fire---

[alamandrax]

you should like, take this problem to a dev forum or something instead of posting it here on... wait a minute... what's going on here? what have you done to my taco.
TACO!

-weeps-

Re:Fire---

[mahdi13]

I get that when running xcomposite with an nvidia card, it looks nice but is extremely buggy

Re:Fire---

[EnronHaliburton2004]

And perhaps you should ask on the Ubuntu forums? We're not really technical here, we just pretend to be ;)

Re:Fire---

[Anonymous Coward]

dist-upgrade? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Re:Fire---

[koonat]

Unbuntu does all their debugging in sanskrit.
And the heiroplyphics for configuration...

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

xcompmgr makes my nVidia GeForce2Go card do bad things to GNOME, like lock out GUI widgets from receiving events, fail to logout, etc. Even with various "low impact" flags. I leave it off.

Re:Fire---

[damiam]

That's true, but so does Mozilla, which the GP claims not to have problems with.

Re:Fire---

[Threni]

Dunno if it helps but I had a similar problem (on XP though) - turns out you can't use Courier as a `monospace` font, although Courier New is ok. Or it could be a problem with your graphics card's drivers.

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

How else do you suggest I upgrade from U5.04 to U5.10, for the rest of the features I want (mostly GNOME)?

Re:Fire---

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Now I'm no Mozilla expert, but I thought that one of the big differences between Mozilla and Firefox was that Firefox relied on GTK and the native OS libraries more the Mozilla; this is one reason why Firefox is a leaner application then the Mozilla Browser

I can't find a reference to this.

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

Well, I've been accepting the (daily or so) automatic updates the Ubuntu/GNOME taskbar offers. But I'm pretty certain Firefox broke after the dist-upgrade U5.04->U5.10. Evolution I'm not as certain, because it seems only to affect some fonts/sizes, and I'm not sure that the failure immediately followed any single upgrade. Otherwise I'd have rolled back, though not U5.10->5.04, because the rest of the upgrade is too valuable.

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

I did ask there, but got no reply. I have gotten some helpful responses in this thread, though :).

Re:Fire---

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Fonts & Colors, and set Display resolution to someting other than 'System setting'

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

You're an idiot. Besides, I'm sure you've never installed or used Linux.

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

I set "Display Resolution" to "Other...", measured the line to 2.25", which set my resolution to 133dpi. When I restarted Firefox, the fonts were littler, and much worse than before. Same problem, but much more text was illegible - almost all of it. That does seem to indicate some connection to that parameter. I just wonder what system parameter is in control, as the problem looks the same in Firefox and Evolution.

FWIW, setting Display Resolution to 72dpi made everything look fine. But <Ctrl>->-<, shrinking text, made it illegible again.

Re:Fire---

[CyricZ]

Like it or not, GNOME is broken in general. That's why people who want their system to work, and to work well, just stick with KDE. It's a coherent, well-engineered product, rather than many libraries just cobbled together.

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

Except that I use GNOME all day, and have for years. There are occasional little bugs, like all the software that irritates me. This font bug happens not to occur in Mozilla. It's irritating in Evolution. But certainly not enough to make me switch my entire environment. Especially Evolution - switching to KDE won't make Evolution work any better, as Evo will continue to use the GNOME libraries. As usual, the solution to a cosmetic bug is to reconfig or fix it, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Re:Fire---

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep trying FF and keep going back to the suite browser. It consistently renders pages faster for me, and they look better too for some reason. Yes, I know, same gecko and everything. Don't ask me, not a dev, this is just what my eyes see. And faster is faster, pure data. Opera is faster than FF, the suite browser is and so is Konqueror. And I have no idea what "leaner" means, you can download *just* the browser part of the suite and it is more functional and just as "lean" as FF.

To each their own I guess. I think FF is way-y-y beta still, just has good marketing.

Re:Fire---

[lethalp1mpslapper]

Sounds like you may want to try rebuilding your font cache. Look at the fc-cache help or man page. You can force a rebuild by issuing a 'fc-cache -f' you may or may not need to do this as root.

Re:Fire---

[Anonymous Coward]

2006 will be the year of desktop Linux!

Re:Fire---

[Doc Ruby]

That improved things, but not 100%. It's starting to look like just a few fonts in a few sizes are messed up. How can I reinstall all my fonts from the network, not just flush the cache?

YEAH

[netkid91]

It had better have some bugs fixed from RC1, I had to remove Adblock(OK, maybe extension issue, but COMPATIBILITY comese to mind) to keep it from crashing after 3 minutes of use. I am a big backer to Firefox and loved trying the 1.5b(1/2) and so far RC1, what I would really like to see is starting to use a non-javascript language for client-side scripting, hmm LUA, PHP, Python and the likes come to mind. Anyways YEAH!!! Downloading it now :)

Re:YEAH

[WiFiBro]

For what purpose? Would XUL be cool?
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/

Re:YEAH

[netkid91]

XUL is a Javascript/XML language, if it was (LUA, PHP, PYTHON)/XML I'd really be happy, I already new about XUL, but a different scripting language to use in it would be nice, IMHO Javascript just isnt enough for web applications these days, getting off-topic so I quit here

Re:YEAH

[WiFiBro]

You're not being very clear. What do you need those languages for exactly?

To work on the page, the xpath thingy is amazingly strong, for example (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/authoring.html).
And AJAX is quite fun, with the xmlhttpRequest method.
Did you see SVG for making 'living' scriptable images? http://overstimulate.com/projects/canvas/

I cannot imagine PHP has much value on the userside, especially with security in mind.
Check this project though:http://www.moztips.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page =XulPhpMySQL

Re:YEAH

[robfoo]

I also had problems with 1.5 and adblock, but turning off Adblock's 'Obj-Tabs' feature seemed to fix it.

Re:YEAH

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Oh, don't quit: You said Javascript is not enough? Please explain -- and remember that we're not talking about js on web pages (where you cannot trust the js engine to behave)...

I'd like to hear what the language, or the SpiderMonkey implementation, is really missing? You might want to check out Douglas Crockford's article to see some common misunderstandings (the rest of the site has some pieces of js that really show the power of the language).

thanks for letting us know!

[Anonymous Coward]

We really care!

+5, Excellent poster, will read again.

Only en-US so far...

[iworm]

The update, at the time of posting, is only available for en-US builds so far. Now I know that that's all that matters, but if you're running RC1 non-en-US then the update might be a little time away yet.

Perchance that's why it's not been publicised yet, and further perchance that's what the poster or editors might have noticed? Sorry, dreaming there for a moment...

What exactly is wrong...

[sczimme]

ltwally writes "Although not posted on the Mozilla website yet, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 is out. You can grab it here.

What exactly is wrong with waiting for the official announcement? Posting the link - and inciting a /.ing - seems like a rude gesture toward an organization techies generally profess to love. Did it occur to anyone that maybe the mozilla folks didn't feel ready to announce the release?? If they did, don't you think the announcement would have been added to their site? (Despite the summary, it appears that 1.5 RC2 was actually there yesterday (09 Nov).)

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[Miphnik]

The official announcement many of us have already received is Firefox updating itself with the new release. Not much point in keeping it quiet if the Mozilla folks have already released it!

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[netkid91]

This is slashdot....you think stories get posted in 10 minutes??? It probably WASN'T posted on mozilla's site when he submitted it.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[the real darkskye]

There is nothing wrong for people updating from 1.5-beta or 1.5-RC1 as the update is only around 360Kb.

Its probabably preferable for moz.org to let as many people grab the tiny update before anouncing the availablility of the 5Mb full installer.

When 1.5 goes gold however, you will have a very valid point, because I know that _I_ will be replacing my existing Firefox Setup 1.5 Beta 1.exe with the final version.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[coolphysco1010]

what is this mess is /. here for giving the update news of s/w which gives automatic updates

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

/., like google can do no evil. So STFU!

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[Trogre]

They still need beta testers.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

some of us dont care if theers a 360k updator! We do full CVS tree downloads every hour and compial them on our gentoo systems.

since I am uberl33t, i reocmpial my whole gentoo system with evary alppication upgrade. I find that it pervents bit rot and i get the freshest clock cycals.

-gentuser

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[stinerman]

The only thing they can reasonably be worried about is the hit that their servers will take ... perhaps they need some time to ramp them up or something. Even then, they can post a torrent and all will be well.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst...it's not Gentoo if you downloaded it from debian.org!

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[CyricZ]

If the editors wait until the official announcement, but it's available earlier, then they will receive shit about them not reporting news quickly enough.

And when they do post it early, then they receive shit about not waiting until the official release.

So either way somebody is going to bitch. They might as well just announce it early, so that we can all be on top of the game.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[KingPrad]

Doesn't seem that rude to me. As I was reading the article I clicked Help on the toolbar and it said it was in the process of downloading at that moment. You're free to come over and discuss it with my browser, but apparently the mozilla servers and firefox clients felt it was time to roll.

Re:What exactly is wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it. Wait until Moz announces it, people complain about it being "old news" and how the release was on their ftp x days ago.

Announce it as soon as it's on their ftp, people complain about how it's "rude".

advancements/innovation?

[xikzantric]

It seems like most of the advances that Firefox made vs. IE have now been neutralized (popup blocking, tabbed browsing, etc.). What new ideas/innovations are the Firefox team making these days to stand out in the browser wars?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[netkid91]

One I can think of standards(most of them) are well implemented, Firefox STILL and NEVER will use ActiveX so that is another, XUL mozilla's Javascript/XML based alternative to IE's ActiveX. I'd be willing to bet they will pull more stuff out of their hat and Microsoft will pull a crappy implementation of it out of their ass(crap? wow, that was good), in sense IE is chasing after Firefox now, what used to be the 'lead' weh browser is now the follower??? Anyways, I'm sure mozilla still has more planned for us :)

Re:advancements/innovation?

[zulux]

It seems like most of the advances that Firefox made vs. IE have now been neutralized [snip] What new ideas/innovations are the Firefox team making these days to stand out in the browser wars?

Security.

Internet Explorer still is an ActiveX exploit away from wiping you files.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[sedyn]

Despite all those features, as long as technical people can recommend firefox as a means to prevent spy/ad-ware to non-technical people it'll continue to spread.

Innovation is great, but adding features for the sake of adding features is what caused a lot of trouble for IE in the first place.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Z-95]

Extensions? No ActiveX? Open Source? And of course, MUCH faster bug fixes!

Re:advancements/innovation?

[DogDude]

One I can think of standards(most of them) are well implemented, Firefox STILL and NEVER will use ActiveX so that is another, XUL mozilla's Javascript/XML based alternative to IE's ActiveX.

Considering the number of Active X applications that I use via the web on a daily basis (several) vs. the number of XUL applications that I'm aware that exist (0), how is NOT having Active X a bonus?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Epsillon]

Is there really a browser war, or is this the megalomaniac in we geeks that says any open source project just has to kill, crush and conquer? Isn't this what makes Microsoft evil?

I use Firefox. I use it because it's the best, not because I have some desire to up a statistic that really doesn't tell anyone anything anyway or help the FOSS movement's world domination push. Can't we just say Firefox was first to market with some pretty damn innovative features and leave it at that?

To be honest, I'd rather Firefox remained where it is. Attracts less skr1p7 k1dd135, doesn't it?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[netkid91]

Hmm, XUL is sandboxed and isn't tied into the OS, ActiveX runs with user priv's and can easily(AND IS) be used to distribute viruses, spywayre, malware, $sys$sonyrootkit.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[deaddrunk]

It can be uninstalled very easily. Try doing that with IE.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[sedyn]

"Is there really a browser war, or is this the megalomaniac in we geeks that says any open source project just has to kill, crush and conquer? Isn't this what makes Microsoft evil?" I don't know, I'd like to visit relatives without having to "fix" their computer.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Epsillon]

Wear the T-shirt, fella!

"No, I will not fix your computer"

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Ythan]

I think extension support is the single most significant feature of Firefox. Sure you can add functionality to IE but it's not as easy as packaging up some Javascript. This extensibility lets Firefox support new and unimagined features without adding bloat. It wouldn't surprise me if IE moves in this direction eventually just to stay competitive.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[netkid91]

Why is it that someone who says the exact same thing I said a few posts up gets modded insightful, but I get nothing??? Are the mods THAT lazy??? But agreed, no ActiveX is one of the largest advantage of Firefox, along with its alternative XUL is sandboxed and can do most of the stuff ActiveX can do with a little coding.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit being a ThinkGeek shill, faggot.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that someone who says the exact same thing I said a few posts up gets modded insightful, but I get nothing??? Are the mods THAT lazy???

Not lazy at all. We just hate you.

HTH

Re:advancements/innovation?

[WiFiBro]

And they are even working on an amazing copy of the Web Developer Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and some sort of GreaseMonkey userscript tool.

Well the best reason is of course to look cool and impress your family at birthday parties. A good second is MS-bashing, always fun.

For me, I love Firefox because
  - I can start typing in a page and FIND things
  - I can easily write userscripts for Greasemonkey to improve websites. For example on a forum I can keep my personal blacklist, reorder the page, detect trolls easily, etc.
  - a very very easy search engine chooser built-in.
  - a very clean RSS checker extension (Sage) without the need of nasty things.

As a developer:
  - it actually gives meaningful errors, contrary to IE.

As a geek:
  - the wonderful new toy called Scalar Vector Graphics (SVG), check out the amazing 'living; images at http://overstimulate.com/projects/canvas/

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Epsillon]

Oh, a sexuality flame. I'm impressed. Did you think of that all by yourself, or are you unsure of your own, sunshine?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

fixing the slow startup and memory problems would buy them alot of goodwill.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[netkid91]

NOW a mod finally uses their mod points on me to mod this post down as troll, instead of using them on my other non-trollish posts??? Is all of Slashdot going to hell, or do we just have a bad batch of mods?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[TetryonX]

There is an extension to firefox that allows embedded ActiveX.
However, this will likely NEVER be part of the default install because security and ActiveX usually aren't the best of pals.

Don't know if they have the Firefox ActiveX builds for 1.5 builds yet.

Gotta love those useful ActiveX components like the Genuine Windows Authentication and Windows Update.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[WiFiBro]

I submit too fast, of course it does not give meaningful errors, but useful error messages.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

memory problems

I haven't seen any memory leaks since I upgraded to 1.5. Normally if I leave Firefox
pointing to a page that refreshes often, the memory will swell to 150MB on my Windows box within 24 hours.

But I haven't seen that problem with 1.5.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[madprof]

SVG has been around for years and years...

Re:advancements/innovation?

[handslikesnakes]

XForms and SVG!

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Matt Perry]

What new ideas/innovations are the Firefox team making these days to stand out in the browser wars

Not a whole lot. They're just making a fast, slim, and secure browser. On the other hand, most of the innovation and neat stuff is happening because of extension authors.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd guess because while you *essentially* said the same thing, you did not say the *exact* same thing.

The observation, "Internet Explorer still is an ActiveX exploit away from wiping you files." is succint and even non-technical folks can grasp what is meant. It's pure gold, it's sig material.

Clarity of expression does have some value.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[WiFiBro]

Sorry, i never heard of it. But the combi with canvas and being able to script to it as described on the link, that's surely new?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[digidave]

What are they doing? With 1.5...

1. Improved the rendering engine (through Gecko)
2. Better tab behaviour (drag and drop placement, better default behaviour)
3. New faster updates that don't require a reinstall
4. SVG support

And more, but I can't remember every big change from the changelog at the moment. Don't forget that this is a minor release, not a major release. It's mostly refining and improving features from 1.0. You can expect bigger changes in 2.0. With any luck, 2.0 will be out in time to greet IE 7.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[handslikesnakes]

Yeah, but only in browsers if you have the (utter crap IMO) Adobe plugin.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[77Punker]

Well, Firefox does have loads and loads of extensions and skins that make it much more than it is on a fresh install. Without extensions and skins, FF is nothing.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[feranick]

From the release notes:

"New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6".

Isn't enough?

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Jugalator]

Just in case some don't know, in the upcoming IE 7, ActiveX is at least now an opt-in feature.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[rizole]

Are you on crack? Just check out these babies and then come back and talk to me about innovation:

Bork Bork Bork

Eggon

Firesomething

It's not just about tabs and security you know. Firefox extends and enhances my productivity and gives me extra functionality, functionality that makes my co-workers all go "Ooooohhhhhh...that's so coool! Show me how to do that"
In an increasingly technologically savvy and cynical workforce (our admin is incompetent and an asshole) I'm re-introducing a sense of wonderment in technology by showing my colleagues how to find out what the weather is doing right now without compromising the pile of shite that is our network.
Back in the day, all this PC, IT, WWW stuff was new, exciting and compelling. There were problems but this was a new fronter and most of us seemed to want to make it a nice place to be.
Things have moved on, grown up and become less romantic but for me and my colleagues firefox is reinvigorating the interest in computing and giving us all a little frisson of excitement. We can play without getting fucked.
And if we can play without getting fucked that means that we can learn and grow.
I'm sorry that my stance is so idealised and romanicised but the innovation and ideas that are coming out of the firefox team is to provide me and my friends and colleagues with a product that does not allow bad people to violate our growth and health.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[killjoe]

" It seems like most of the advances that Firefox made vs. IE have now been neutralized "

Most? Most? I think not. After three years of complete stagnation IE has come within 50 or 60% of the features of firefox I rely on daily. These come immediately into mind.

Find as you type, mouse gestures, flashblock, adblock, live bookmarks, nuke anything (great for printing!), web developer, foxylicious, and of course bork bork bork!.

Whenever I am forced to use IE I feel like somebody tied my hands behind my back.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[mikefe]

And how is Windows update going to work without ActiveX?

If that doesn't change, then I guess ActiveX isn't all that "optional".

Re:advancements/innovation?

[CyricZ]

Please stop making such remarks while advertising FreeBSD in your signature. It gives the remarkable FreeBSD project a very bad image when it is associated with your assery and shenanigans.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[deltalimasierralima]

Let's wait and see what comes out of the Extend Firefox competition. Should provided an extra boost to its popularity

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Mistshadow2k4]

But can you go directly to an FTP site without needing an FTP client in IE 7 like you can with Firefox? Dunno, but I do know you can't with IE 6; it just gives you a page not found message when you click an FTP link. And, although I can't speak for anyone else on this, in my experience IE was always far more crash-prone than FF since FF got out it's infancy stage.

Most of all (and I've probably said this before) with Firefox you can turn off software installation, although you have to turn it on long enough to install extensions. But when you're done with extensios, just go to Tools->Option->Web Features and uncheck Allow Websites to Install Software. That won't block all spyware and viruses but it will block quite a bit of it.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Xarius]

Considering these standards are hardly new, no.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Sycraft-fu]

If you use the automated update feature, it doesn't use IE.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try browsing a few porn sites for several minutes. A few TGPs and several HQ images later and you're looking at over a gigabyte of memory use.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Khalid]

Too bad, lots of those extension get broken when you upgrade to a newer version.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that is a good question. It is not about innovation - there is nothing revolutionary in a *browser* it is commodity. The best aspect of Firefox is that is open standards based - that is it. Using FF (and other standards compilant browsers) I can make websites (I build intranet systems) and I can forget about which browser somebody uses. I go for the standard. I know this is not a feature for common-joe-six-pack-user but it is for me. Anything other like tabbed browsing, popup blocking etc. etc. can be accomplished using lots of different ways (like plugins, alternate shells to rendering engines, user-filtering-proxy etc.) - this is not the problem. Problem is standards. You can make MSIE block popups, you can secure MSIE, you can make it block adds, you just cannot make it standards compilant.

And this is main feature. It is for your own good. Any browser that is compilant with common standards is a Good Browser. Closed source or not. That does not matter since you are running *standard*, you can switch browsers whenever you wish.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[callqcmd]

The latest feature is protection from in-memory threats.
Firefox now runs and takes up all your system RAM, making sure if there are any in-memory threats trying to belly-up in your comp, it will starve to death.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you write like a 5th grader sending IMs. How you say it is at least as important as what you say. Also you'll be hard-pressed to find a single post above a 2 that has a smiley in it. :)

Re:advancements/innovation?

[StikyPad]

Agreed. I just wish it wasn't such a resource hog. I can leave Opera or IE open in the background while I'm playing a game, but I take a serious performance hit if Firefox is running. Actually, that's true almost any time I see a performance slowdown, even if it's just in other applications. My first remedy is always to close Firefox (accompanied by a vocal "Arghh!" for good measure).

Re:advancements/innovation?

[majjj]

How do you know and where do you know this from ??? Be careful M$ can sue you for.. revealing thier secrets ;)

Re:advancements/innovation?

[mixmasterjake]

You forgot one...

5. Google Toolbar extention no longer works

aye caramba

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Epsillon]

Are you telling me that I don't have a right to reply because of my support for FreeBSD? Granted, that remark may have looked like "assery" to you, but the simple fact is that sexuality has nothing whatsoever to do with a person's conduct on the 'net. The original post was intended as a joke. The T-shirt I was referring to was actually worn by an AMD employee at a large conference, which had nothing to do with ThinkGeek whatsoever.

My comments are always honest representations of my opinions although, granted, I have a slightly warped sense of humour. I don't go out of my way to troll, flame or insult and I never post AC for those very reasons, but I'll be damned if I'll roll over and die at a stupid comment such as that which I replied to.

Perhaps you'd like to tell me exactly where I'm going wrong?

BTW, I'm straight and have been married for 14 years, if it makes a difference. It shouldn't, but this is Slashdot.

Re:advancements/innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The SVG support is, alas, incomplete. Trust me, this is like "CSS x.y (with some bits and pieces missing)" all over - you now have SVG files that display properly in Firefox 1.5, but not Opera 8.5, or 9.0. Or vice versa *sigh*

For a test, see http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/svg.html and http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/manual/output.html

Tels

seamonkey too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is seamonkey ready too?

Please save Mozilla.org some bandwidth

[Critical_]

If you're running RC1 already, the posted links have .MAR files available to perform an update without redownloading the entire binary. Windows users should be careful because .MAR is associated with Microsoft Access in Office 2003 (maybe earlier versions but this is all I checked with). Anyway, info on how to update with .MAR files is here:

Manually Installing a MAR File

----
Car pictures gallery

Re:Please save Mozilla.org some bandwidth

[tritonic]

While we're talking about automatic updates, does anyone know whether Firefox will notify you of updates if you install it as root? Obviously it won't be able to update itself when you're running as a user, but it would be nice to get the notification regardless.

Re:Please save Mozilla.org some bandwidth

[darinf]

No, it should not. In fact, Firefox should suppress all update UI when the user doesn't have permission to modify the Firefox installation directory.

Re:Please save Mozilla.org some bandwidth

[tritonic]

Well perhaps it would be good to have it as an option. I would imagine most people install firefox as root and run it as an ordinary user. For a normal household computer, this is probably the most sensible thing to do security-wise - but then you lose the update notification, which is bad for security.

Presumably this affects windows too, especially when Vista arrives which will apparently discourage running as administrator.

**raises nose**

[joemawlma]

I'll be just fine with my Internet Explorer 5.0, THANKS!

Re:**raises nose**

[uberjoe]

You spoiled kids. Links is all you really need.

Re:**raises nose**

[netkid91]

LINKS!!! LOL :P Seriously though, links was awsome before fancy gfx and flash and that stuff popped up on the web.

Re:**raises nose**

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one use eLinks on my IBM Thinkpad 755ce. The part I like the most is tabbed web browsing. You just can't post to /. because of the stupid anti bot system.

Re:**raises nose**

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice porn collection, and your checking account is overdrawn. Sorry about that.

Re:**raises nose**

[Doctor Crumb]

Links? Slow down there, sonny. We don't need any of your fancy tables formatting or background colours. Lynx lets you browse the web the way it was meant to be browsed, without the bells *or* whistles!

Re:**raises nose**

[PitaBred]

You realize that lynx is the one that does colors and all, and links is the plainer one?

Changelog

[Anti-Trend]

I went to hunt down the changelog, and since I had to compile a list of changes from a few sources I will go ahead and reproduce the whole thing here:

* Fixed: 314241 - "Report broken web site" toolbar button is broken when using "small icons".

* Fixed: 313490 - Enable IDN for .org.

* Fixed: 313894 - Reporter chrome is registered twice.

* Fixed: 313360 - Profile locking doesn't work if the profile is located on a FAT partition.

* Fixed: 314754 - "Extension compatibility updates" check never completes.

* Fixed: 314684 - Endless update loop from firefox 1.5 beta2 to 1.5 rc1 if 1.0.x was ever installed

* Fixed: 312777 - Negative margins cause floated elements to be placed to the right of incorrect earlier boxes (since March 2005).

* Fixed: 312363 - document.write into iframe results in broken-lock icon

* WFM: 314484 - Firefox 1.5 RC1 topcrash [@ 0xffffff4d] [@ js_GC]

* Fixed: 309044 - Flashplayer 8 "Bad NPObject as private data!"

* Fixed: 314258 - ExtensionItemUpdater:checkForDone: Failure in listener's onAddonUpdateEnded.

* Fixed: 315017 - [Linux] Undetermined progressmeter doesn't work.

* Fixed: A few potential security holes.

* Fixed: 313414 - Add a way to do "sandboxed" http connections that don't modify the cookie list.

* Fixed: 314465 - Implement a non-copyingCompareUTF8toUTF16.

* Fixed: 263042 - Ship both autocomplete impls with the new-toolkit

* Fixed: 264308 - Implement DOM Level 3 UserData API.

* Fixed: 314218 - New version of JEP (0.9.5+a), please land on trunk and branch.

* Fixed: 147670 - Wrong (last or empty) tooltip text displayed for dropdown list menu items.

* Fixed: 226094 - Support JavaScript Core for WinXP AMD64.

* Fixed: 314549 - Various bugs involving containers not actually fixed for subframes.

* Fixed: 312036 - History.dat contains entries deleted from the "date and site" view.

* Fixed: Several fixes for specific DHTML performance tests.

* Fixed: 312804 - No longer shows loading-image.gif when loading images

* Fixed: 309706 - Stack overflow crash [@ jpinscp.dll + 0xaa87] (since Sept 22).

Re:Changelog

[afidel]

* Fixed: 313490 - Enable IDN for .org.

I hope they don't mean by default, or if they do I hope that it retains my settings for blocking IDN! IDN for a native English speaker has basically zero benifit and can only lead to many problems like phishing sites that use UNICODE character replacements for legit sites.

Re:Changelog

[WiFiBro]

Very true.
If you type in about:config and filter for idn, you will see that network.enableIDN is still set to false, if it was. I see a lot of country-based whitelist preferences appeared. I suppose you can trust them. I do not know what relation the preferences have, which one is higher in the hierarchy.

Re:Changelog

[JanneM]

Well, if you want to see a site whose domain includes richer character sets, you do no matter what language you speak. Just because you use a local domain doesn't mean there can't be useful information in English after all. And if you are looking for technical information, other languages are frequently less of a problem; you still understand equations, illustrations and code snippets, and automated translation tools are usually good enough to extract the needed info.

Complaining about IDN because you can have characters that look alike is no different than complaining that the address bar font makes little difference between "l" and "1" or "O" and "0" (or, even, in some fonts, "8" and "B"). AFAIK, Firefox clearly marks when an address uses IDN; a much clearer indication than when someone tries a substitute-character trick within the ASCII subset. And if you are relying on the address as the indicator of web site veracity, I have a few hundred PayPal account verification request emails for you.

Re:Changelog

[dennison_uy]

* Fixed: 312804 - No longer shows loading-image.gif when loading images I don't know what your "sources" are since you did not indicate it but I just tested this part, and it still does.

Re:Changelog

[njchick]

Fixed: 147670 - Wrong (last or empty) tooltip text displayed for dropdown list menu items.

Not fixed. Follow a link, put mouse over the "Stop button" until it shows "Stop loading this page", click on the arrow of the "Back button" before the tooltip appears, move mouse over one of the items in the dropdown list. The tooltip will say "Stop loading this page".

Re:Changelog

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a lot.

Re:Changelog

[jesser]

The Mozilla Foundation only enables IDN in Firefox for top-level domains that have good anti-spoofing policies:

"In order for us to display IDNs in a particular TLD, that registry concerned must have and keep a published policy stating which characters are permitted. If the set of characters contains pairs of homographic characters, the policy must specify a method to prevent two homographic domains being registered to different entities." (source)

Firefox also includes a small blacklist to prevent the worst kinds of spoofing (such as characters that look like slashes or spaces) in case a TLD registry screws up.

Re:Changelog

[jesser]

If you're going to copy information from The Burning Edge without attribution, at least get it right. You included several bugs that were only fixed on the trunk.

Re:Changelog

[Maian]

It's been fixed on the trunk (which will lead to Firefox 2.0 or 3.0), not the branch that Firefox 1.5 is on. It was too late to land the fix on branch for RC2.

Re:Changelog

[Maian]

* Fixed: 264308 - Implement DOM Level 3 UserData API

AFAIK this wasn't landed on branch.

Hooray, SVG support!

[Max Threshold]

Now I can embed SVG images into my pages. Exported from OpenOffice Draw, of course. "This site best viewed with a modern browser. Get Firefox 1.5 now, you Neanderthal!"

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[ReinoutS]

That's strange. Last time I checked, OO.o2 Writer couldn't import SVG images, which I found very annoying. But Draw can export them?!

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[ScislaC]

Have you tried Inkscape?

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can embed SVG images into my pages. Exported from OpenOffice Draw, of course. "This site best viewed with a modern browser. Get Firefox 1.5 now, you Neanderthal!"

If you are happy with that 85% of your site visitors won't be coming back then why not? Most companies, however can't afford this.

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[redcliffe]

Well it doesn't seem to work with the w3c's svg test suite....

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[LnxAddct]

For a really cool use of SVG (it uses png if SVG isn't available), check this out. That is pure javascript/css/html.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Neandertal, you insensitive clod!

Re:Hooray, SVG support!

[Celsius 233]

I use Safari, you insensitive clod.

The only change...

[sheepoo]

...is that it does not say FireFox 1.5 Beta 2 in the title bar any more. Any other changes?

Re:The only change...

[Anonymous Coward]

nope... that was it. All they did was make a 370Kb name change.

*chuckles*

Typical

[DreadSpoon]

Typical Open Source mindset...

"The release candidate is out... if you haven't upgraded yesterday, you're bloody obsolete!"

(I'm _joking_ people... put down the damn pitchforks already.)

Re:Typical

[bhima]

Sure, but we still have the torches!!

Re:Typical

[c_forq]

Not until you give us free (as in beer) uhh... beer.

Re:Typical

[netkid91]

*renames torches $sys$torches* where did they go?? Anyways the pitchforks and torches should be redirected to Sony(then M$)

Re:Typical

[Tumbleweed]

And don't forget the trebuchet throwing flaming tar balls. "Fabulous!"

Oh, okay, fling the friggin' cow, if you must...

Re:Typical

[idlake]

Hey, Microsoft's releases alphas (aka "x.0 versions") and declares everything before then obsolete.

Release Candidate????

[0-9a-f]

The 2nd release candidate of sub-version of a product is "News"???

Any product that has more than one sub-version release in 12 months hardly counts as "news".

If it was only updated, say, every other year - then we might be talking... but this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Especially since RC1 (already in use by the really keen) will tell you about it automatically!

Sigh...

Re:Release Candidate????

[Arandir]

It's "news" because the editors of Slashdot think it's news. Not only is it news, it's such awesome earth-shattering news that it makes the main page!

A mention of a 1.5 release might qualify for the IT section, but not an -RC2. Geez, FreeBSD 6.0 didn't even make the front page!

Re:Release Candidate????

[PitaBred]

It didn't? I seem to remember it hitting the main page...

Re:Release Candidate????

[whereiswaldo]

Speaking of FreeBSD, anyone using FireFox on FreeBSD? It's a bit of a bugger to compile.

Re:Release Candidate????

[Arandir]

I just built it yesterday, and had no problems. I used ports, and simply did a "make; make install", and it just worked. Took a long time because Firefox is a huge beast, but I didn't have any build problems.

Re:Release Candidate????

[whereiswaldo]

I don't have Firefox in my ports tree, unfortunately. Haven't figured out how to get it there yet (via a port upgrade?). Could you refer me somewhere? I'm running FreeBSD 5.4. Thanks in advance.

Re:Release Candidate????

[Arandir]

Read the Handbook on ports, and particularly on synchronizing ports (to get the latest). Once you have your ports tree set up, you can find it under /usr/ports/www/firefox. Here's what I do to set up:

[as root...]
cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile ~
[edit ports-supfile to point to a cvsup server]
cvsup ports-supfile

Additional instructions for Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Download the appropriate .MAR file
2) Rename downloaded file to "update.mar"
3) Copy into your %firefox directory%/updates (i.e. "c:\program files\Mozilla Firefox\updates"
4) Run Firefox
5) Click "Help" on the menu toolbar
6) Click "Check for updates"
7) Hit next when it says "Firefox 1.5" is available for update.
8) Everything is automatic and will restart Firefox for you.

Good luck.

The official Mozilla Firefox RC2 page

[__aaxwdb6741]

Why hasnt anyone posted this yet?

FF rc2 @ mozilla

Re:The official Mozilla Firefox RC2 page

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't I see any differences in the list of what's changed from the RC1 page?
  http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/rc1.html
  http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/rc2.html

Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Maxmin]

Under Windows XP, Firefox has become my browser of unchoice, because it's clipboard functionality is totally borked. I posted to bugzilla, and saw that about a million other people have too.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[SuneSpeg]

Its an intentional feature, implemented by a linux fan at the development team.

It now emulates linuxclipboard.. Yes your right, its b0rken :)

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[The One KEA]

What clipboard bug? Most of the clipboard bugs I know of occur only when running Firefox under XFree86 (i.e. on Linux).

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Apathetic1]

Apparently you're not alone since this got moderated up. I haven't run into any clipboard bug - can you provide a URI or a description of the problem?

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Maxmin]

Here ya go:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_for mat=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all __&product=Firefox&content=clipboard

FWIW, it looks like there has been some attempt to resolve, as some of these are in state closed. About to try out the release...

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I've noticed is that right-clicking in the GoogleMail reply text area, you get a standard right-click dialog, not an editing dialouge. Kinda slows down the process when you have to go back to Edit/Paste in the Alt menu. EN-Win 1.5Rc1 and Rc2 now both checked for this behaviour, and both exhibit it. Haven't complained 'till now since it's really not a big deal, but there it is.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[strider44]

Well the most notable clipboard bug under Linux is when in KDE you accidentely middle click. The problem with just removing this though is it's sometimes damned useful to middle click (for example when trying to go to an unlinked URL you can just double click to highlight and middle click to go to that URL), it's just annoying when you do it accidentely. They should have an option to disable middle click if you'd like.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Sycraft-fu]

Sometimes in XP the copy operation stops working. You'll select a link or some text in Firefox and tell it to copy, then when you paste it in the target program, you'll get whatever was in your clipboard before that. You try again, it still doesn't work. Usually a restart of Firefox is required to fix it. It's really damn annoying.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[StikyPad]

I always have problems with text selection as well, especially in the address bar, but also in the search box and various text boxes. If I want to cut off the end of a url, like http://slashdot.org/blahblah/dothis.php?stupidis=s tupiddoes to just http://slashdot.org/ in most browsers I just click after the .org and move to the right and it'll scroll to the end.

In Firefox (if I remember right; I'm using Opera ATM) I have to click (highlights all), then click again to get a cursor, but if the URL is too long it automatically scrolled to the end, so I have to hit Home, then reposition the cursor, and sometimes it won't scroll to the end (just highlight the visible section).. it's just a PITA.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[DarkEdgeX]

Yeah, this happens to me as well. I usually do Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy from the address bar to an open chat window in another application, and sometimes it will, for seemingly no reason, not work. Sometimes I'll even try Ctrl+X (cut), and sure enough, when I do this the text disappears from the address bar (indicating it recognized the cut operation), but it still won't paste! Just to verify it's not the chat app but Firefox, I open Notepad and still can't paste.

Oddly, if I beat the unholy shit out of Ctrl+C it will, sometimes, eventually work. Sometimes.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Apathetic1]

GMail seems to work as it should on my copy of RC2.

When I decided to test 1.5 Beta, I uninstalled 1.0.7, deleted the Firefox installation directory then copied my bookmarks into a clean profile. That may help, although it does mean resetting your configuration.

Incremental update from 1.5 Beta 1 to 1.5 Beta 2 failed on me but the update from Beta 2 to RC1 and RC1 to RC2 both worked fine without a clean install.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[Maian]

Main bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22090 0

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[matvei]

1. Go to about:config
2. Double click on middlemouse.contentLoadURL

Tada! No page loading on middle click on the page. If you meant something else, check out the other middle* options.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[courtarro]

I will point out that this is not necessarily a problem with different click behavior, but primarily a problem with cursor behavior. If you'll run IE and hold your mouse over the address bar, you'll see that it's a standard arrow pointer, and if you click once, it selects the whole box. You must then click again to deselect and once more to begin your selection. This is exactly how Firefox behaves by default, except that in FF the cursor is an I-beam when you first hold the mouse over the address bar, which has the undesired effect of suggesting that you can immediately begin selecting.

That said, you can fix/change this behavior in FF. Go to about:config and add/change the value of "browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll" to false. To solve your higher-level goal of reducing urls, I use Googlebar Lite, which has a very useful "up one level" button that neatly trims pieces from the url each time you click it. Give it a try.

Re:Does it fix the friggin' clipboard bug?

[StikyPad]

You're correct about cursor behavior, but I just did an experiment in selecting text in the address bars of 3 browsers. Here are the results:

Internet Explorer 6.0:
Click 1) Mouse cursor is an arrow. Highlights entire URL. Long URL is scrolled to the end. Mouse movement has no effect. Release.
Click 2) Mouse cursor is an I. Places text cursor. Mouse movement highlights text in either direction. Vertical position has no effect. Release button.

Firefox 1.0.7:
Click 1) Mouse cursor is an I. Movement selects text. Release without moving highlights entire URL. Long URL is not scrolled to the end.
Click 2) Mouse cursor is an I. Click and move attempts to drag highlighted URL. Pause while button depressed selects "word" (word is defined as alphanumeric text surrounded by non-alphanumerics). Movement after pause selects word+text in direction moved. Release button without pause places text cursor at expected location.
Click 3) Mouse cursor is an I. Click and move highlights text as expected. Inadvertant vertical movement beyond the toolbars may deselect the address bar text and may highlight text on the page instead. Deselecting highlighted page text is an excercise left to the reader.

Opera 8.5: Behaves the same as IE, with the exception that the cursor is always an I.

I guess it could be faster to select text in Firefox if you click and move the mouse on the first click, but mirroring expected behavior has its advantages, especially when you're trying to get people to convert.

Adblock Extension

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been unable to get the Adblock Extension working under any of the 1.5 version releases till now. Any ideas??

Re:Adblock Extension

[WiFiBro]

Of course, the best place for support is not here... but most extensions describe for which versions they work, and usually this excludes the beta and the release candidates. And most extension developers have already changed their interest.

One thing you can do is get the Nightly Tester Tools, http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/b uildid/nightly.html, set it so it makes all extension versions working. Of course this is cheating so some extensions might not work.

An other usual problem with extensions is they have no proper ID. For this, check the extension homepage or the Firefox support fora.

Re:Adblock Extension

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem doesnt seem to be with the highest version number of Firefox that is supposed by the latest Adblock extension version as Firefox 1.5 doesnt disable it completely stating uncompatibility issues. The symptoms are more like unable to open the dialog box for Adblock preferences just by right clicking on an image and choosing "Adblock Image" from the menu and none of the configured filters actually having any effect on the blocked images. This points more towards a broken Adblock than just mere uncompatible version issues that completely disable an extension instead of allowing it do something undesirable.

Re:Adblock Extension

[grondu]

Switch to Adblock Plus http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2662 91

Re:Adblock Extension

[fatted]

I had the same problems on RC1, but this post on the adblock forum sorted it:

http://aasted.org/adblock/viewtopic.php?t=2264

Also check out this post on Mozillazine:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3208 38&sid=6a88fd3644153617e8c93f553fb29044

Re:Adblock Extension

[The MAZZTer]

Firsly, make sure to grab the latest version 0.5.2.50, use google to track it down. Secondly, it's only compatible up to 1.5 beta 1, but you can the Nightly Tester Tools extention to force it and other extentions to work with any version of Firefox (doesn't mean they'll run right, but most do).

Fasterfox

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about fast, this latest release really screams!! Especially with the Fasterfox extension... Those Opera guys are pretty quiet now.

Re:Fasterfox

[Mistshadow2k4]

I'm an FF fan myself - using it right now - but I must admit, according to my system, Opera uses less memory, roughly half (depending on how many pages/tabs you have open and what you're doing). When my other comptuer gets a new motherboard next month, I'm going to use Opera on it because it has less memory. So, although I like FF better, I must say Opera is still pretty good. But if they ever get Firefox's memory use down to as low as Opera I'd only use Firefox.

Re:Fasterfox

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, quit repeating yourself. You're repeating yourself. You keep repeating yourself dude. Dude, quit repeating yourself.

Mac OSX Load Times

[Paska]

The most noticeable difference I am seeing in this release is load times on my Powerbook. RC1 was hovering around 8-10 second initial load time and RC2 is now 1-2 seconds.

This was my one gripe with Firefox on OSX, and it now seems to have been fixed, and too my untrained eye it even seems to be quicker all-round over Safari.

Re:Mac OSX Load Times

[eepok]

I second this observation. I'm running OSX here at work and RC2 is (finally) just as fast as Safari, if not faster. I am a happy nerd.

Not quite built for Windows x64...

[saveth]

If you're running Windows x64, there aren't any native RC2 binaries available yet. However, you can check out this site for Deer Park Alpha 2 (latest) binaries and information on how to build your own Windows 64-bit Firefox-ness from source.

http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/

(Or, of course, you can just use the 32-bit version, but that's no fun.)

Re:Not quite built for Windows x64...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's alright, most 32 bit software runs quicker on amd64 than 64 bit anyway.

-1, No Boundaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it occur to anyone that maybe the mozilla folks didn't feel ready to announce the release?? If they did, don't you think the announcement would have been added to their site?

Yeah, okay. Let's talk about personal responsibility here.

First, you don't have clue one how mozilla feels about it. If you did, you would have said so, and hopefully supported your claim. So your point is pretty much moot, since mozilla is perfectly capable of speaking for mozilla.

Second, if mozilla wants an announce before or when the release is made, they need to publish the announcement before or when the release is made. It would be completely unrealistic for mozilla to expect folks not to download and share free software posted to a publicly accessible server.

Third, mozilla is not prevented from officially announcing the release.

Fourth, it is easy to use your own reasoning to refute your point: Did it occur to you that if mozilla cared they could have taken any of the above actions? If they do, don't you think they would have done something about it?
 

Firefox 1.5rc2 is nearly ready to be announced

[Anonymous Coward]

The Firefox 1.5rc2 release is nearly ready to be announced. When it is, we'll update our website to point you to the installer files with links that use our load balancer. A note: going to our FTP site directly will hammer all mirrors evenly which is bad for those smaller mirrors that aren't as bandwidth-laden as our bigger mirrors.

If you can't wait for your Firefox 1.5rc2 fix, though, feel free to download Firefox 1.5b2 or 1.5rc1 and then use software update (Help -> Check for Updates...) to grab the 1.5rc2 update. The updates for both to 1.5rc2 are less than a meg!

Chase, the build/release guy at Mozilla

Re:Firefox 1.5rc2 is nearly ready to be announced

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmms, I'm using 1.5RC1, but I can't use Help->Check for updates (it's greyed out, in settings everything on, but Firefox is greyed out too). Where should be problem? (Linux, install in home directory with rights to delete, update for extensions works well).

Re:Firefox 1.5rc2 is nearly ready to be announced

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, just solved it, next time, check the directory and file permissions ;-)

Release notes here:

[David McBride]

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/1 .5.html

Monday

[caspy7]

It appears from one of the developer's comments that the localized builds will be released on Monday.

WTF

[tkh]

I downloaded the RC1 about an hour ago! The good thing is that the new update mechanism works very nicely. It just downloaded 300KB and restarted automatically, and now I have the RC2 installed.

Re:Firefox "update" feature sucks

[alfrin]

Do you pay any attention? The new 1.5 Firefox has binary updates, eliminated that problem all together.

nc really is no frills.

[temojen]

echo "GET /" |nc www.example.com 80

Re:Firefox "update" feature sucks

[idlake]

They have such an installer. It's called "Debian". Or "RedHat". Improves your PC in lots of other ways, too.

Greasemonkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated to 1.5 RC1 because I wanted to see what was new. Now, I wish I hadn't, because Greasemonkey doesn't work with it. Any word on when it will?

(Yes, I know I can uninstall and re-install 1.07, but I'm too lazy.)

Re:Greasemonkey?

[WiFiBro]

http://greaseblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/firefox-15- compatible-greasemonkey.html

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 informative, thanks!

Compulsive

[fm6]

Great! Links to a new software release, without a single word as to bug fixes, new features or potential problems. In other words, we have the software, but we don't have any information with which to make a sensible decision to install it — or not. Talk about compulsive upgrading.

I've been running this for days...

[Tezkah]

... and it just now gets posted on Slashdot?

Why all the fuss about Release Candidate #2... with some minor bug fixes, when Opera released a technical preview of their next generation browser, Opera 9.0/Merlin?

Sometimes I wonder if Mozilla has been putting some of their advertising dollars at work here...

Re:I've been running this for days...

[WiFiBro]

The short of it: Slashdot simply is not about being fair.

Other things:
* Firefox attracts more geek attention with the possibility of making extensions, XUL, etc
* Opera has been flying below the radar using the wrong UserAgent by default, only now changed in the specs you link to, so apparently a very low percentage of webusers seems to be using it, while Firefox seems to have taken a serious part of the market. Campaign among Opera users to change that, and stats may change radically.
* if i read the specs you link to, many (not all) items are following what ff already did. Well actually they are very close. I like seeing they do Xpath, Canvas, and that they improve xmlhttprequest.

Re:I've been running this for days...

[jofi]

Simple. Positive news items on /. are posted about:

* Open source apps
* Anything not Microsoft

Biased news items are posted for:

* Anything Microsoft

Re:I've been running this for days...

[whitehatlurker]

Something's happening - I'm fairly certain that Opera stories are being rejected out-of-hand, while anything with a link to Firefox gets passed on immediately.

Thank you for passing this information along to the community.

For what it is worth, the MacroMedia Flash Player has a security hole that has been fixed in version 8. This is mislisted by Secunia as a hole in Opera?! (But not Firefox. If my tin foil hat still worked, I'd be using it 24x7.)

Re:Firefox "update" feature sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant "OpenBSD" and "FreeBSD". Far more secure and stable than that Linux cruft.

Try Aethera.

[CyricZ]

That's just it. You're using buggy software. In the past people had to ditch Outlook because it was buggy. Now people are realizing that Evolution (and many other GNOME projects) are becoming just as buggy.

While people such as yourself are futzing around with broken software, those in the know are using KDE and are thus being far more productive. Aethera is a far superior product than Evolution, just as Konqueror is often superior to Firefox.

Don't complain about your broken software when there are far better substitutes available. Do yourself a favour and make the switch you should have made several years ago.

Re:Try Aethera.

[Doc Ruby]

Why shouldn't I complain about my buggy software? It's all open source, and the bug I'm complaining about is quite specific. Complaints are a way to get people to debug it. If I don't hear how to resolve it with a reconfig, I'll file a bug report. If it doesn't get fixed, I might hack it myself, or pay someone to do so.

I've got my reasons to prefer Evolution, including my skill in using it. Why should I give it up? And why shouldn't I complain when I know what I want, a flawless Evolution?

Re:Try Aethera.

[CyricZ]

It's up to you if you want to keep using inferior software after you have learned about far better alternatives.

It doesn't sound like you're very productive with Evolution if you're running into so many problems with it. Since a high level of productivity is needed these days, it's best to just use software that works. And such software is often software from the KDE project, or KDE-based software.

Re:Try Aethera.

[Doc Ruby]

"So many problems"? I've got exactly one problem, which I work around, which emerged recently, which I expect to solve shortly, through upgrade or otherwise. I assure you that I'm facing no productivity decrease from it. You're obviously just cheering for your preferred app. Which means you're ignoring whatever bugs your app has - that any app has. Not exactly a reliable opinion to motivate my switching my entire desktop environment.

If you're able to do such a switch yourself on that kind of basis, you're probably not very productive yourself, regardless of your rate - I mean real amounts of production, which I produce voluminously and to great profit, thank you.

Really, if you want people to be receptive to your advice, you've got to offer just the helpful insights, and skip the patronizing insults to our own insights and experience.

Re:Try Aethera.

[CyricZ]

I was productive in the first place because I realized that GNOME and Evolution were not well designed pieces of software, and thus I avoided them right off the bat. I never had to make a transition away from such awful software, because I chose the correct software in the first place.

Remember, you're the one running into productivity problems because you're using sub-par software. Switching to better software is often the answer. You're lucky that in this case such software is readily available!

Re:Try Aethera.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want people to be receptive to your advice, you've got to offer just the helpful insights, and skip the patronizing insults

It looks to me (after reading the recent comments) as though CyricZ spends most of his or her "productive" time trolling. Most of that trolling seems to be anti-RH or anti-Gnome. FWIW I'd be willing to wager that CyricZ could troll just as productively under Gnome.

Re:Try Aethera.

[Anonymous Coward]

CyricZ is a fucking obvious and well known troll, and reminds me of the old-school spiralx style trolling. Wether or not it is spiralx or not remains to be seen; I can't be fucking bothered to read trolltalk these days.

Do plugins work (StumbleUpon)?

[wealthychef]

Last time I tried 1.5, I bailed on it because StumbleUpon stopped working with it. If it weren't for that, I'd probably not use FF. Do most plugins now work with 1.5, or should I still wait? Thanks.

Re:Do plugins work (StumbleUpon)?

[Paranoia Agent]

I use stumbleupon, and I've had no problems, it seems compatable. I'm using the most recent Stumbleupon build.

Re:Do plugins work (StumbleUpon)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kindly discuss this sort of things on the appropriate forum (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=23) .

A list of extensions working in 1.5:
http://www.projects1.com/firefox/exthacks/FFnightl yextensions.html

Re:Changelog - So many issues...

[Brad_sk]

I thought only MS products have so many bugs...So, even opensource products are not fool proof since its inception! Interesting.

Portable Firefox 1.5 RC2 Released

[CritterNYC]

Portable Firefox has been updated to the 1.5 RC2 release. For the unfamiliar, Portable Firefox allows you to carry your whole web browser along with all your bookmarks and extensions with you on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it right into any Windows computer and use it just like you would on your own. It is a repackaged version of Firefox designed with portability in mind, so it has all the same great features, but there's nothing to install.

Portable Firefox 1.5 RC2

And if you're a fan of the portable apps, Portable Gaim 1.5 Beta was released to day, as was Portable Apps Suite, a preconfigured suite of portable applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, NVU, OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, FileZilla and Gaim.

Re:Portable Firefox 1.5 RC2 Released

[VGPowerlord]

I used to need to take Firefox with me when I went to uni, but they seem to have added Firefox to their drive images. Of course, being FF 1.03, it's a bit out of date, but I oddly have Power User privileges on these machines...

Re:Portable Firefox 1.5 RC2 Released

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah!

Here in my college we haven't the right to install any software on computers (wich means no firefox!)... but it seems that now I will be able to enjoy it since I just bought a new ipod last month!

Rock on :)

Standards support

[NanoServ]

There's a reason that standards-conscious web developers really push to promote alternative browsers like Firefox and Opera. Internet Explorer is so far behind in standards support, it typically doubles or even triples the amount of time it takes me to develop a cross-browser webpage and also dramatically limits what I can do as far as lean code, style, and accessibility.

Take a look here to get a visual of how badly Internet Explorer is lagging behind other browsers: Standards support summary

I'm currently in the process of testing Firefox 1.5 for these tables, and I can say that the Total CSS support figure is now at 65%. For the mathematically uninclined, that's just about double Internet Explorer's. And from what I've heard about the IE7 development, it isn't going to make up much ground anytime soon.

Why there is no "RC2" in the version string

[Anthracks]

IANAMD (I am not a Mozilla developer), but I assume there is no RC2 in the version string because for once they are actually adhering to the meaning of "release candidate". If they find no show-stopping bugs in this build, the exact same file you just downloaded will be rechristened "Firefox 1.5". If they had to change anything (even the version string), it wasn't technically a "candidate for release".

Re:Why there is no "RC2" in the version string

[armb]

And if they do have to change something, it's not like having two different things with exactly the same version string could cause confusion, is it?</sarcasm>

Works for me...

[SD_92104]

SwitchProxy still works fine for me (RC2, WinXP)

Firefox 1.5-- and FUD!

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that it's not just Firefox 1.5 that's available today-- the powers-that-be at my work decided it was also a good day to release some FUD. The mandate came down that we had to remove Firefox after our IT department sent out this email:

"Some browsers are open source and thus advertised as free, but they are not without cost. For example, there are security issues because the developers focus more on functionality than on security for this type of software. Firefox is a good example - it has gained in popularity over the last year so that now it is a target of hackers and writers of viruses. Several magazine articles have recently documented the security concerns with Firefox compared to IE. Firefox did not fare well."

Re:Firefox 1.5-- and FUD!

[pintomp3]

so how do you like working at microsoft, AC?

Re:Firefox 1.5-- and FUD!

[adrianmonk]

Several magazine articles have recently documented the security concerns with Firefox compared to IE. Firefox did not fare well.

Oh my gosh -- they said it in a magazine article!? Well, then it must be true!

Re:Firefox 1.5-- and FUD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that explains my boss's idea that Firefox is insecure compared to IE (Backdoor's and such, so he says ... )

It makes my life a lot more difficuly trying to do IE wrangling cuz of weird IE rendering/DOM bugs.

Re:Hooray, SVG support MOD PARENT UP

[g-san]

That's pretty cool. Thanks.

Three broken

[No Such Agency]

The following extensions stopped working for me:

Farkit (for commenting on Fark.com)
DownThemAll (bulk file downloading)
ImgTag (adds img HTML for a web image to the clipboard)

Download Resuming

[ThePeices]

One feature id really like to see firefox support is download resuming. Adding Getright-like features to the download manager would be a great feature. There isnt even an extention available to do this....

Here's a question...

[lowid (24) _________]

that some resourceful slashdotter will answer easily. How do you set firefox so that when filling in a form, you can tab onto pull-down menus? Really think that ought to be a default setting - hear people complain about it rather frequently.

While we're somewhat on the topic, is there a good reference guide to what everything in about:config does? That *would* be handy...

P.

New 'save link as ' sucks.

[barnaby]

In Linux the GTK only filepicker (right click -> save page/link as) is awful
(IMO). Forcing this change on every Linux user because some folks at red
hat think it is a good idea to more fully comply with Gnome is awful.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3188 60&highlight=filepicker

How about giving those of us that have been using Mozilla for five years a
pref to use the XUL filepicker that we are used to?

I save upwards of 20 files a day and am very used to the defaults the way
they are.

I'm staying with Firefox 1.0.x at this point.

Re:New 'save link as ' sucks.

[pembo13]

I seriously hate the File Browser too (I'm a KDE fan) , but how is this RedHat's fault? It's Mozilla's project.

Re:New 'save link as ' sucks.

[barnaby]

Read the mozillazine thread. It states that the firefox coders that made the change are employed by Red Hat.

"automagical"

[The Cydonian]

Something that happens automatically, but on whose mechanism the speaker doesn't want to elaborate, either because it is trivially obvious, or exasperatingly complex.

Re:"automagical"

[fm6]

...either because it is trivially obvious, or exasperatingly complex.

Which covers all uses of "automatic".

JavaScript wackiness of 1.5 Beta 2 fixed?

[JPyObjC Dude]

I have been bouncing back and forth from Beta 2 and latest stable release. I love the performance improvements and several general rendering bug fixes but I have been plagued with JavaScript failures that are unfortunately way too difficult to debug.

Hopefully some other developers have hacked together some JavaScript acid tests to root these babies out because they are really show stoppers for my apps.

Fantastic work otherwise!

JsD

Re:Firefox "update" feature sucks

[gcauthon]

The new 1.5 Firefox has binary updates, eliminated that problem all together.

Ok, so when the next version of Firefox comes out after 1.5 then the problem will be eliminated. If 1.5 has the binary update feature then how will that help people looking to upgrade to 1.5?

Mac OSX

[rdoger6424]

This is something new for macintosh os x users: you now can switch the default browser to Firefox.

Wait for the release notes...

[Jason O'Neil]

I would probably wait until the mozilla website officially opens Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 to the public. Then there will be release notes on the website, which will probably let you know what's happenning with sea monkey.

Re:Wait for the release notes...

[scruff323]

Its on the main site now.

Re:Hooray, SVG support MOD PARENT UP

[LnxAddct]

Sure, not a problem. For more cool javascript stuff checkout:

Some more demos from dojo (the editor one is neat, after you select your toolbars, it lets you edit the text of the page on the fly.

Another site, OpenRico, has a neat javascript library. The link takes you to their live grid which updates in realtime through AJAX, but above the grid you'll see their other demos that you can click to view.

Here is another site, ActiveWidgets, their 1.0 version is just a very customizable grid that can be made to look like anything from an excel spreadsheet to a listing of files in a directory (look at the examples linked to from their front page). If you scroll down on this page you'll see links to examples for their 2.0 beta. Check out all 3, you can make your website essentially appear like a native WinXP dialogue (I think that is WinXP, I run Fedora though).

Keep in mind all of this is in javascript/css/html, its also all opensource (you can search for other projects like these, a notable site is scriptaculous). Its really neat to see javascript finally being used to its full potential, web apps should get really interesting in the next few years.

Regards,
Steve

still wont use it -- because...

[johnrpenner]

just tried it -- but it STILL doesn't have the basic UI features you'd expect of a 1.0 release.
for example, just basic text text selection in the URL becomes a pain, because it doesn't
abide by standard text selection keyboard shortcuts.

to be fair, firefox does support : left and right arrows do move the cursor
left and right, and using SHIFT+arrow DOES select the text in either direction.

but if the URL text is selected, and i type down-arrow, why doesn't it go to
the end of the text? or if i type up-arrow, why doesn't it go to the beginning
of the URL text?

on the mac, this is just text keyboard shortcut 101. but when you get these
cross platform apps, why do so very few open-source apps ever manage to
get them right?

- up-arrow: move cursor to beginning of URL text.
- down-arrow: move cursor to end of URL text.
- shift-up-arrow: select text from current location to start of text.
- shift-down-arrow: select text from current location to end of text.
- right arrow (when text is selected) > cursor ends up at end of selected text (which it does).
- left arrow (when text is selected) > cursor SHOULD end up at start of selected text (but it doesn't, it ends up there shifted an extra character to the left, which is wrong).

these are standard expected behaviours, and firefox implements these behaviours
in SOME parts of the programme, but not others -- so it is inconsistent and annoying.
its just these basic 'rough edges' that apple always seems to get right,
but seem so hard for other to 'just get the basics' that keep me from switching
from safari to firefox -- tabs and pop-up blocking are already in safari, so why
should i put up with a whole bunch of rough edges, when safari already HAS
(and has always had) these things already working?

alas -- it actually works in SOME parts of the programme -- if you enable
the preference setting 'Allow Text to be Selected with Keyboard' -- but although
it works THERE, it still does NOT work in the URL. :-(

ten-to-one these arrow keys will still not be working in the URL when firefox 2.0 comes out,
and i still won't use it then.

2cents,
j

oto -- if its a matter of using that virus-prone abomination called Explorer,
well, it is firefox anyday over THAT.

Re:still wont use it -- because...

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

The url bar is also a another control (a dropdown-list), which has other behaviour for down-arrow and up-arrow. One of these behaviours has to be dropped. The mozilla devs have decided to drop the textinput specific behaviour (actually it's still available with c-left / c-right and s-c-left / s-c-right).

You need to state your arguments for changing this. Why would it be better to change the down arrow -action from current one (moving up in dropdown-list)? To me that is clearly the most expected action in the situation... By the way, does Safari really behave differently here?

IF you're not running FFRCn, here's the .EXE

[Maxmin]

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-1.5rc 2&os=win&lang=en-US

Scratched my head about .MAR files, then found this link. Kind of silly to post an article with only an obscure updater format.

Don't upgrade

[Dr. Spork]

As much as I like having the New Thing, I'd wait with the update. There is not much wrong with 1.07, and all the extras work.

Honestly, I regret my rush to 1.5RC1, not because it crashes, but because the theme I insist on (Nautical) doesn't work. Also, Stumbleupon and Google's official toolbar don't have 1.5 versions.

So upload now only if 1.07 is causing you headaches, which I honestly find hard to imagine. In about 3 weeks the situation with the 1.5 branch will be better... no harm in waiting that long with 1.07!

Also, I found All In One Gestures doesn't autoupdate, though you can get the new version from the project's homepage, and it works with 1.5. Back and Forward load times seemed to get noticeably quicker in 1.5 - but it's not worth worth all the broken extensions.

Why keep messing with the extensions interface?

[Dr. Spork]

Grr, why is it that every release breaks the old extensions and requires a rewrite? Seriously, do the developers lack so much foresight that they can't settle on an extension API and support it in subsequent versions?

I understand that accreting backwards compatibility demands would add bloat, but what this runaround does is add a big pain in the ass. If you don't want to add bloat, why not offer a make-old-extensions-work extension? (And an interface that offers to install it it when you have old extensions that don't have compatible updates?) Once the compatibility extension becomes obsolete it could be uninstalled, but it would sure make these transitions a whole lot easier!

BTW, I have the very same gripe about themes. I have to look as something very ugly right now because the theme I insist on is still not updated. Why not a "do your best to use old themes" extension as a temporary compatibility layer?

Anyway, I am griping about this because it's not a big request, though it would make a big difference. There's no need to force users to go through this crap every time Firefox versions jump ahead by a few decimal points.

BTW. I love Firefox, I love where it's going, I think it's an almost perfect browser, I just though this small improvement would make a big useability difference and increase dramatically the number of people who are willing to test development branch browsers - which is good for everybody in the end!

Re:Why keep messing with the extensions interface?

[dylan_-]

Grr, why is it that every release breaks the old extensions and requires a rewrite? Seriously, do the developers lack so much foresight that they can't settle on an extension API and support it in subsequent versions?

They don't require a rewrite and aren't broken. It's the extension writers setting the version number they support too low. Just changing that number in the extension is normally the only change that's required. Complain to whoever wrote the "broken" extension. You can check this yourself by unzipping the .xpi file, editing the Install.rdf file and change em:maxVersion to something like 2.0. It won't complain that it's broken again (of course, if something changes that really *does* break the extension, it will stop working without warning (unless of course the extension has a new release, which you install (which would, presumably, require you to edit the Install.rdf again to keep it working))).

Re:Why keep messing with the extensions interface?

[WiFiBro]

Sweety, you are trying out a Release Candidate, not a Release!

CSS Support

[iamlucky13]

Perhaps if Microsoft at least made a decent attempt to comply with the current standards. Admittedly no browser is 100% compliant, but most are about a full generation ahead of IE 6 and it seems IE 7 too, since all indications point to no worthwhile changes in that departement for explorer. It might not matter much to the average user, but the fact the the Mozilla Foundation actually tries to support the advancement of web standards wins me over. If you don't know what I'm talking about, an easy example is mozilla.org compared between Firefox and IE.

Changes in RC2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Xatrix has a news article with some of the changes in RC2: http://www.xatrix.org/article.php?s=4181

I noticed a smaller memory consumption.

Acid2?

[zaguar]

How about the Acid2 test? Does it improve on it's performance in that area? With browsers like Safari and Konquerer passing it, are there any real efforts at Mozilla to get some standard compliance in that area?

Re:Acid2?

[Slashcrap]

How about the Acid2 test? Does it improve on it's performance in that area? With browsers like Safari and Konquerer passing it, are there any real efforts at Mozilla to get some standard compliance in that area?

No released version of Safari passes it. I think what's happened is that the development team announced that they hope to pass it soon, but because you are wearing the rose tinted glasses that come free with every Mac, you have misinterpreted that statement as "Safari passes it!".

Hope this helps.

Re:Acid2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just asked the same question in the german c't forum http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/go.shtml?read =1&msg_id=9222866&forum_id=87759 and the others say no. But the FF developers are working on it.

O. Wyss

Re:Acid2?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Not that I value Acid2 conformance that much, but... OS X 10.4.3 actually comes with Safari 2.0.2.
Now put the glasses back on. That's an order.

likewise, HTH.

Just an observation

[St0rmwarden]

Has anyone else noticed that the 1.5 RC2 release notes page doesn't display properly in IE? :)

The reason why I'm browsing in IE? Well I'm having some problems applying the RC2 update patch, but that's another story...

Have they fixed the pluin manager ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares ?

Unless they've fixed that bloody plugin manager it'll continue to be as useful as a pair of (stale) chocolate underpants.

Man I hate being bugged about installing plugins that I just don't want. Stop bugging me already.

Sheesh.

Re:Have they fixed the pluin manager ?

[WiFiBro]

the pluin manager pushing plugins? no idea what you are talking about. But I could see some uses for chocolate underpants!

If this flamebait were in Soviet Russia...

[rdoger6424]

Installing any version of downgrade is pretty much a Linsux. Windows has that Linsux 3.1 look to it. Do yourself a windows-use Favor.