Mozilla Firefox 1.5 RC3 Released

Jasper Bryant-Greene writes "It doesn't look like the official website has updated yet, but Firefox 1.5 RC3 has been just been released. MozillaZine has the scoop."

Comments

Fantastic

[b1gn4tb00bs]

Firefox is the best browser, i cant wait for the full release of 1.5

Well

[dep01]

I hope IE is updating their notes on what to incorporate in to IE7 *rolls eyes*

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because your a retard.

Re:Well

[SComps]

At least I'm a retard with dignity rather than throwing up "retard" posts hiding as an AC to save your soul/karma.

I'd much rather be a known retard, than a shadow lurking weasel.

I don't know why anyone can't put their karma where their mouth is.

Yea but...

[MtViewGuy]

Any news about when will the Mozilla Foundation release the final version? Hopefully, it will be around the first two weeks of December 2005.

Re:Yea but...

[dep01]

Just in time for the christmas rush :)

Re:Yea but...

[mlefevre]

They haven't officially announced a date, but they are expecting to release 1.5 final by the end of this month. But of course it depends on feedback from testing RC3, sorting out the publicity stuff, localisations, etc etc.

Re:Yea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be in the next week, or perhaps the week before Christmas then, right?

Or did you actually mean *during* the first two weeks of December?

Re:Yea but...

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, the main reason why I am expecting within the first two weeks in December for final release is that this coming week is Thanksgiving holiday week in the USA, and a lot of testers might be out on vacation. I hope the Mozilla Foundation folks account for this and aim for a early December release.

Re:Yea but...

[mlefevre]

Given that the Mozilla folks (the release is managed by the Corporation rather than the Foundation now) are based in the USA, and so will probably be on holiday themselves, I would hope that they've factored that in.

Given their history of optimistic scheduling, and the propensity for last minute problems to pop up when releasing any software, there's certainly a fair chance that the release will be early December rather than late November. Anyway, it'll happen when it happens... anyone in a hurry can use the RC.

Re:Yea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they really wanna get it ready for the christmas shopping.

Re:Yea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll keep on releasing release candidates until their stats are warped enough that they can claim another pointless "mile-stone".

And for those among you who keep on proclaiming that updates or betas don't count against the stats you can take a look at http://ff.asbjorn.it/hourly.php . The surges on Nov 2nd/3rd, 10th and the 18th today conveniently coincide with the release of RC1, RC2 and RC3 respectively.

If you bother to keep track you'll notice huge spikes on every release version as well.

Re:Yea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 1.5 will be released on Nov. 29

Re:Yea but...

[MtViewGuy]

I'm not sure if the November 29, 2005 release is a good idea, though. Don't forget that many people who contribute to the Mozilla Foundation and outside testers will be on vacation this coming week for the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA and I want at least everyone back doing proper final testing before we see the final product.

Re:Yea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mozilla Foundation takes Thanksgiving into account. A lot of testers will not work at their daytime job on Thursday and Friday, so they'll have 2 more days to work on Firefox, hence speeding up its development.

Re:Yea but...

[milkman_matt]

Just in time for the christmas rush :)

Better start lining up now to make sure you get a copy! ...Are they taking pre-orders?

Re:Yea but...

[fbg111]

Firefox business plan:

1. Release Firefox 1.5 on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Re:Yea but...

[Baricom]

Hey, cool. The ??? is actually meaningful for a change.

Re:Yea but...

[zobier]

It would've been good to get 1.5 final before Thanksgiving so geeks could install it on Mum/Dad/Gran's computer while visiting them. I guess we can do that at Christmas though.

Update now popup is too forceful

[LiquidCoooled]

I was in the middle of typing a posting and this thing popped up taking away focus.
Didn't have full time to check, but hitting return would/could have started the update process off without informed consent.

I realise they want to get it updated, but I think the new regime is just a bit too forceful - it should be on application startup and not checking whilst I'm browsing.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[kalirion]

Some people never shut down Firefox, though I couldn't do that since it's memory usage seems to constantly increase during use.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the middle of typing a posting and this thing popped up taking away focus.

Actually this is very common behaviour in most Windows (and to a certain extent OSX) apps. I don't know how many times I've been typing away in App A, when App B decides it needs to throw up some stupid dialog right when I'm pressing the key, leading to me wondering WTF I just said ok to. This is a general design flaw in many/most windowing systems today as they assume that the user tends not to multitask much, which may be true for many/most, but certainly not true for me.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Southpaw018]

I believe this was addressed as part of the RC2 to RC3 update in the "Background tab steals foreground focus" bug.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Pieroxy]

The worst one is when you're downloading some stuff with IE. Hopefully this happens only once per windows install (when you download Firefox).

IE is downloading its stuff in windows temp folder. If you are unlucky and decided to save the file in another drive, at the end of the download it will move the file to wherever you wanted it. The move dialog then pops up and the selected button is... Cancel !!!

So if you happen to press Space or Enter at that time, you are in fact cancelling your download.

Just plain insane.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Mercano]

I think this may be from the 1.6 nightly builds, but I've noticed when the update dialog pops up on its own (as opposed to when you make it come up via Help-->Check For Updates), the OK has a ~3 second countdown before it becomes enabled, the same way unsigned extentions work. Should prevent acidental action in the future, though the anoyence factor is still there.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[nmg196]

Actually, the dialog doesn't pop up. It's there the entire time and always has the cancel button. So the chances of that happening are pretty much zero unless you alt-tab to it and press enter - which is hard to do accidentally. The text in the download window changes to tell you it's moving the file, but it's the same dialog and it doesn't pop up or focus itself. Just tried it in IE 6 to make sure.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[iwan-nl]

The worst one is when you're downloading some stuff with IE.

That's not the worst one! This is far worse (NSFW).

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[DJStealth]

This is a problem, especially if you're typing a password or something.

I found this behaviour elsewhere within Firefox (and IE too, I think).

If you're loading a page, and it's taking a while; then you start typing in the addressbar. Once the page loads, if it has a text input box, what you're typing automatically continues in the text input box of the page.

I was thinking, before changing focus, a simple thing to do would be as follows: If more than 2 keys were pressed in the last second, do not switch focus. Otherwise, (if less than 2 keys in last second) then switch focus.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Val314]

no, this is the only way. (people *never* update their Systems unless forced to to so)

btw: the default setting is install without asking me, so most users shouldnt even see this message

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Pieroxy]

We are not talking about the same popup. When the download popup is done, there is another one popping up, which moves the file. You can see it only if the file is quite big and your destination is on another drive than windows. If you download on your C:, of course, I don't know if the dialog is displayed at all.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[LnxAddct]

Gnome stops windows from stealing focus, when they want focus they just start glowing very lightly in the window bar. I would think OS X has a similar feature.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[afd8856]

Gnome is really nice in this matter. Not even IM windows (I'm using skype) can't steal the focus. They just blink in the taskbar. Open source can do things really nice sometimes, and Ubuntu and its components is one of those examples.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[speculatrix]

there's an option in "windows control panel->mouse" to automatically move the mouse pointer to the default button on a dialog box. (Or at least it was there in win2kpro)

I turned it on once because it seemed like it would make, but when I found myself accidentally doing stuff, I turned it off, and stayed clear of it since!

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Omestes]

Better solution, don't steel focus, EVER. A program does not need my immediate attention, EVER. Even if it is a terrible virus that will kill my hard drive, or a new version of FF that is SO much better than the previous, it can wait until I finish answering that email, or typing that /. response.

I have enough distractions on my computer taking my productivity away, that I don't need one more. Steeling focus is a design flaw, period. There is no reason for it. It is bad usability, in that programs in the back ground are there for a reason, I don't need to be reminded that they exist. As for FF, I really don't need it to check for updates, and it really doesn't have to ruin my work-flow (/. reading?) for a silly update.

I like how OS X does it in theory, by bouncing a dock icon. Tasteful, subtle, and not to attention grabbing. Windows does it all wrong, though I've noticed a move on some Mac developers to do the "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!!! NOW!" thing to.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even IM windows (I'm using skype) can't steal the focus.

Wow, so any window can steal focus!

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[10101001 10101001]

This is precisely the reason I disabled "FocusOnMap" in IceWM. Sure, it's a little more annoying to have to click each new X-app that I launch from the taskbar/hotkeys, but I never have to worry about the above mentioned problem. Oh, and I'm sure that there are other WMs with a similar feature. I just happen to like/use IceWM.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[OneOver137]

Which apps on OSX steal focus? I don't think I've ever seen that. Usually the icon in the dock jumps up and down to tell you there is another app that wants some user input.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Viper Daimao]

A design flaw, but a sometimes humorous one too.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[jacksonj04]

Windows has a 'flash taskbar icon' feature which does much the same. I hate *most* applications stealing focus, but occasionally there are some "You need to know this NOW" messages, such as remote shutdown, which I am fine with stealing focus as long as they have some failsafe to stop themselves closing instantly as I keep typing before i notice it is there.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this is very common behaviour in most Windows (and to a certain extent OSX) apps. I don't know how many times I've been typing away in App A, when App B decides it needs to throw up some stupid dialog right when I'm pressing the key, leading to me wondering WTF I just said ok to

[AOL] Me too! [/AOL]

In my opinion, whoever is responsible for this even being POSSIBLE should be taken out and SHOT. It's my #1 UI complaint, both in seriousness and frequency.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

TweakUI has an option to prevent Windows apps from stealing focus.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[LiquidCoooled]

I don't look up at my screen most of the stuff I am typing, its just in the peripheral vision most of the time. I know what I'm typing and expect it to be displayed as typed.

As it happened, just like I'm typing this now, I got the the end of a paragraph and pressing enter when I noticed this box and stopped what I was doing.

3 seconds doesn't help... it just quite simply should not have automatically come up, especially since a software update could be unwanted or inpractical at that moment.

I was concerned something had invaded my system, its been a while since something unexpected popped up (having seen a popup ad in yonks).

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[LiquidCoooled]

Actually, the default is still to warn people that their themes or extensions are going to get vaped (was was the case with me).

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Bogtha]

I don't know how many times I've been typing away in App A, when App B decides it needs to throw up some stupid dialog right when I'm pressing the key, leading to me wondering WTF I just said ok to.

If any KDE users are annoyed by this, go to Control Centre | Desktop | Window Behaviour | Advanced, and change "focus stealing prevention level" to one of the settings None, Low, Normal, High or Extreme. Low works fairly well for me.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[owlnation]

I can't accept this as being the only way. This is simply a "nanny knows best" approach. By all means make it a default option, but I see no reason why there should not also be an option for "advanced" users to disable any kind of pop-up message in favor of either a wholly manual operation, or notify on start-up or exit - in any program, but particularly in this Fx case. I agree with what is stated elsewhere in this topic that even notification of the worst virus ever created can wait until you have finished whatever work you are doing in an app. Pop-ups are deeply irritating, evil, and dangerous, period. It's not just the web page spawned ones.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how many times I've been typing away in App A, when App B decides it needs to throw up some stupid dialog right when I'm pressing the key, leading to me wondering WTF I just said ok to.

It used to be much worse. I believe the official behavior in XP is that an existing window in a different process cannot steal focus and a process can steal focus by opening a new window only once. In practice it seems to allow more new windows through.

This is a general design flaw in many/most windowing systems today as they assume that the user tends not to multitask much, which may be true for many/most, but certainly not true for me.

It's not a very simple flaw though, because sometimes you do want new windows to have focus. Eg, if I start a new appication, I'm probably sitting there waiting for it. Leaving focus on the desktop would be wrong. And then there are windows within the same process, which the OS can't generally know what the correct behavior is.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[An Onerous Coward]

Funny thing. I've been on the latest release of Ubuntu, and nothing behaves the way I expect. When applications try to take focus, all Ubuntu Gnome does is start the taskbar button flashing for that application.

Sometimes I prefer this, but I've gotten in trouble with my girlfriend for not answering her instant messages, because I didn't notice that they got sent.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[isometrick]

Solution: get a new girlfriend.

Or, since this is Slashdot, stop making up such a bitchy girlfriend just to rationalize your point. :-p

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Professor_UNIX]

I don't look up at my screen most of the stuff I am typing, its just in the peripheral vision most of the time. I know what I'm typing and expect it to be displayed as typed.

A good touch typing course can help with this problem. Rather than hunting-and-pecking for keys on your keyboard you can watch the screen and see exactly what is going on. :-)

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[LiquidCoooled]

I certainly don't hunt and peck for my keys, I just generally look away from the screen (especially true when I'm thinking about something, I'm not generally looking at anything in particular)

When I am typing notes etc I read from the paper and touch type properly.

I don't see the need most of the time to actually look at the screen.
I can type faster than most around me and have never seen a problem with it at all until this popped up :)

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

"As for FF, I really don't need it to check for updates"

Go to Tools->Options
Advanced section
Update tab

Check out the section titled
"Automatically check for updates to:"

Uncheck as desired.

(Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be helpful.)

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I prefer this, but I've gotten in trouble with my girlfriend for not answering her instant messages, because I didn't notice that they got sent.

Time to buy some speakers to hear the GAIM sounds, eh?

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Baricom]

Not even IM windows (I'm using skype) can't steal the focus.

I despise this feature. I simply don't see the taskbar when I'm working unless I look for it. Is there an easy way to turn it off?

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Anonymous Coward]

dude.

"stealing"

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[prell]

This happens to me a lot, and I'm sort of seeing it with new eyes, as I hadn't been using Windows much for a few years. I dislike it. It's one of several things that give me the impression that Windows' behavior is not predictable. It's one thing to have something crash every time you do it - at least you can avoid it - but to have things crash randomly and when you aren't doing anything you feel to be abnormal is very disconcerting.

And I don't necessarily feel like this happens only when I'm "multi-tasking." I try to avoid doing multiple things at once. Though, I do feel like it happens most when I've started an install process and put it in the background. All of the sudden, a tiny box will come up and disappear while I'm typing, and then the computer reboots. This is infuriating. Applications should have their own context. Programs shouldn't be able to interrupt your current context (e.g. editing code) with stuff that pertains to another context (e.g. an installation process). It should perhaps just notify you that some other context has a message for you.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Kelson]

I see no reason why there should not also be an option for "advanced" users to disable any kind of pop-up message in favor of either a wholly manual operation

In the Options/Preferences/Settings box, look under Advanced:Update.

You can disable automatic checking entirely, and you can choose between "ask me what to do" and "just install it, already!"

(I suspect the GP was trying to say that forcing updates was the only way to keep *most users* up to date, not that it was the only way to do updates at all.)

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[An Onerous Coward]

Annoyed girlfriend? Or $20? Annoyed girlfriend? Or $20?

Hang on, I'm thinking.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[snilloc]

Ditto, except that I left it on in the admin account. I don't do anything w/ that account other than un/install things and do maintenence, so it's not so bad.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[darkwhite]

TweakUI on Windows allows you to set a registry flag which will disallow this behavior. There are programs which will not honor it (including Firefox, which is why I turn on its error pages).

On KDE, if a program is acting up, you can set in window-specific preferences to never allow it to steal focus ever again. That means unless you click on the title bar, the app will never get focus. This can be set for all programs, too.

Oh, thats what that dialog was for.

[n00tz]

Say what? Sorry, my browser prompted me to restart for an update.

Firefox 1.5 downloaded already via auto-update?

[Greg01851]

My Firefox prompted me for an upgrade to 1.5 already... although it's not on any of the websites.

Why do we care?

[TheZeusJuice]

Not to be a troll or anything, but why does slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox to be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other OSS. And also, anyone who uses Firefox would notice and know what the little green upward-pointing arrow on the upper-right-hand corner means.

Re:Why do we care?

[dep01]

I love firefox.... and slashdot.... but good point, actually. "News for Nerds. Stuff that MATTERS." -- Does another RC matter? Not a whole heck of a lot. Tell me when Firefox 1.5 final is out.. Enough of the RC updates.

Re:Why do we care?

[SComps]

I agree with you completely, but the firefox evangelists will cry if they don't get their weekly press. Sadly Firefox has become the darling child of the OSS movement because of it's successes. Those successes are largely due to the evangelists themselves, but also in no minor part to it being a vastly useful product. This separates itself from much of the OSS on the market today. Thats not to say that most OSS isn't useful, but not globally so.

Of course it's also truly sad that a web browser is the symbol for all this evangelism. I can't think of anything better, but then again does OSS really need a symbol?

It's just a browser folks. It's software and a product, like toilet paper and cheesy tasting crackers. Honestly? I'd like to see a frontpage article about Cheez-It's upgrading to a new cheezier flavor. I'd be on that like white on rice.

Re:Why do we care?

[squoozer]

It is a little different to every other piece of OSS in one really important way - loads of people use it. It is the one real shining jewel of the OSS community so we should give it plenty of column inches.

Before I get flamed out of existance I am not saying that there aren't other good pieces of OSS - there are plenty - but Firefox / Mozilla is the _only_ one that a good number of non-geeks use (although I imagine Azureus comes close but that's a bit hard to promote).

Re:Why do we care?

[TubeSteak]

Actually, I never noticed a green arrow

As for why /. considers FF updates to be important, it might have something to do with the fact that FireFox seems to be one of the few (only?) reasons MS is bothering to add features to Internet Explorer.

Or it could just be that /nerds like to keep, one of the few pieces of software they interact with constantly, updated. I'm sure once MS starts cracking out Windows updates we'll see more "Critical Update" articles and that trend is vulnerable to the exact same criticism: why does slashdot deam every minor update of windows to be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other commercial software.*

*I might be stretching that one a bit, but you get the point. When all else fails, most nerds like the default setting to include as much information as possible. Which is worse: losing a few seconds of your life scanning and dismissing /. articles you don't care about or never seeing an article you might find important because someone else (/. editors) didn't think it was anything special? /end

Re:Why do we care?

[MtViewGuy]

Those successes are largely due to the evangelists themselves, but also in no minor part to it being a vastly useful product.

Actually, the best thing I like about Firefox is the fact most websites will now display the pages correctly with this web browser, unlike pre-Mozilla 1.7 versions and older Netscape 4.x versions. I'm all for the improvements that Firefox 1.5 will offer! :-)

Re:Why do we care?

[Jesus 2.0]

Not to be a troll or anything, but why does slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox to be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other OSS.

You just answered your own question. Slashdot deems every minor release of every OSS thing to be incredible breaking news.

I can't count the number of times I've seen front page Slashdot posts that essentially boil down to:

ThingYouNeverHeardOf 0.6.3 Released

Slashdot user Doofus reports that ThingYouNeverHeardOf 0.6.3 has been released. Many cool new features in this version, such as the blarglefier tool no longer causing a crash when run under Ubuntu 4.6. Licensed under the GPL! Is this the end for Microsoft?

Half the time, they never even give you a hint as to what ThingYouNeverHeardOf is supposed to be used for. Is it an email client? Is it an IDE? Is it a MIDI playback library? Does it cook my eggs? Who knows.

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it makes the developers, most of whom still live in the basements of their parent's house and have never kissed a girl, feel good to get recognized on Slashdot.

So basically the Firefox group is full of people who want attention for everything little they do.

Re:Why do we care?

[Threni]

>> Not to be a troll or anything, but why does slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox to >> be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other OSS.

> You just answered your own question. Slashdot deems every minor release of every OSS thing to > be incredible breaking news.

You need to work on your English comprehension skills. It the release of every "OSS thing" were deemed important by Slashdot then they'd all be featured here - the OP is complaining that only Firefox gets this treatment.

> I can't count the number of times I've seen front page Slashdot posts that
> essentially boil down to:
>
> ThingYouNeverHeardOf 0.6.3 Released

So work on your math skills then. Are you sure you've come to the right website?

Re:Why do we care?

[onedotzero]

I think anything involving a new FireFox update (or downloads-to-date 'milestone') or Google beta or Microsoft press release just ramps the likelyhood of getting an article published.

Are there clear benefits for having articles accepted? Maybe some Jammy Dodgers or something. If that were the case I might start stea^H^H^H^Hwriting...

Re:Why do we care?

[smittyoneeach]

I feel that you may have just discovered a concept called 'advertising'.
Possibly no one has thought to patent this concept.
However, your friendly PTO will be happy to slide you some justice.
So ya got that goin' for ya!
Just try not to notice that the words 'news' and 'matters' in the phrase 'News for nerds. Stuff that matters' may not mean what you think those words mean, 'K?

Re:Why do we care?

[Ender Ryan]

Hey, I got news for you. Slashdot has always been like that. We're nerds, geeks and losers. We like these things. We like updating kernels, playing with the latest bleeding edge cool software, especially when it's something as big as FF, etc.

So fuck off.

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Emule is probably used by more non-geeks than firefox.

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you re a fucking nerd as your claim, wouldn't you already follow the Firefox development and know when version are released?

Or do you lack the brains to sign up for their development newsletter?

Re:Why do we care?

[Jesus 2.0]

Thank you for explaining to me that I need to work on both my English and my math skills.

In return, please allow me to do you the favor of explaining to you that you need to work on your humor skills.

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree, the OSS world evangalized the hell out of Mozilla 1.x, and nobody used it. They've been evangalized the Linux Desktop forever, nobody uses it. They evangalize OpenOffice, nobody uses it.

Firefox caught on because it meets or exceeds Internet Explorer in nearly every aspect, not just a few cherry-picked features. In other words, it's success is due to the programmers and UI designers and has little to do with generally ignored OSS evangalism.

Re:Why do we care?

[Dysproxia]

Yet you read the comments and wrote one yourself.

Not many of Slashdot stories matter much, and readers have different interests. Those of us who use non-English versions of Firefox might be interested to read about the update before it hits them.

Re:Why do we care?

[Tassach]

Well, considering how buggy I found RC2 to be, it's good to find out ASAP when there's a new version available. Your browser is an important tool, probably one of the most used pieces of software on your system. Keeping it up to date is important to a lot of people. Furthermore, Firefox is one of the most widely-used and visible open-source projects. If we were talking about something like xmms, a new release would be a far less significant event.

Re:Why do we care?

[Threni]

I humoured you, didn't I? :)

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the majority of the non-slashdot type crowd doesn't ever notice the little green or blue or red arrows in the corner. My girlfriend hadn't updated firefox since I made her download 1.0 because she never realized that the little arrow wasn't just a part of the toolbar graphics. Most people don't have the inclination to click on unknown graphics on their computer for fear of doing something bad. Clicking on unknown links or attatchments on the other hand...

Re:Why do we care?

[ickleberry]

I can understand if they had a story for 1.5 beta 1 or something, but jeez when release candidates are considered news it must be a slow day, when mandriva has a new release candidate it doesnt make the news. Most people (me included) generally wont notice the difference between RC2 and 3. I updated from RC1 to RC2 because of a bug but it wasnt fixed.

Re:Why do we care?

[Dr. Spork]

I liked your post, giggled, and also realized something: Firefox is not ThingYouNeverHeardOf. I would venture to guess that for most nerds, it's their most-used app (or close). It's quite right to closely follow its progress here in some detail, and I for one certainly appreciate it.

But to prevent whining, admins could make a "release announcement" sub category that would be blockable from the user's config page. That way the whiners could save themselves the 0.1 seconds that it takes to scroll past the story.

Re:Why do we care?

[dhasenan]

Regarding your sig:

VIRI NON SVMVSNE DEVO SVMVS
The -ne postfix _always_ appears on the first word in the question, though never on a preposition. Or at least rarely.

I'm not sure about the translation of "devo"; I haven't been able to find anything for the stem "dev-".

Re:Why do we care?

[observer7]

how many times do you hear about a new release of internet explorer ? not in along time until firebox built a fire under there ass at ms and the they went to I.e. beta 7 . that's why its note worthy and extraordinary

Re:Why do we care?

[RicktheBrick]

I upgraded to the first rc of version 1.5 only to find that most of my extension would not work. I will wait at least a month after the final version is released so that everyone will have time to update their extensions.

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Not to be a troll or anything, but why does
> slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox
> to be worthy of a story?

Okay, that's it. Hand over your login id. How did you get in here, anyway?

Re:Why do we care?

[an_mo]

Actually, I never noticed a green arrow

You probably don't have "check for updates" enabled.

Re:Why do we care?

[Martin Blank]

You can always add in the Nightly Tester tools that 'fixes' the version numbering problem. I'm finding that a lot of devs are updating their extensions to work with 1.5 (most of which seems to be adjusting the allowed version numbers) in any case.

Re:Why do we care?

[drinkypoo]

You are being a troll. Turn off firefox news if you don't want to see it. I saw the update on /. before the update icon appeared (assuming it would have appeared) and my firefox was running all night (1.5rc2) so it's not like it wasn't running long enough or something. This story told me that there was a new firefox, for which I am grateful. So, sod off :D

Re:Why do we care?

[smittyoneeach]

Thanks for the Latin help. Only had it 15 years ago in High School. ;)

I'm not sure about the translation of "devo"; I haven't been able to find anything for the stem "dev-".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_We_Not_Men_We_Are _Devo!

Re:Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it an email client? Is it an IDE? Is it a MIDI playback library? Does it cook my eggs?

If it is Emacs, yes.

Re:Why do we care?

[miceuz]

shshshshshshshs... the war is going on, we need to create more fuss around firefox in order to get the publicity and to get it proffessionals as proffessionals do install firefox on the users computers.

Re:Why do we care?

[bloodstains]

That way the whiners could save themselves the 0.1 seconds that it takes to scroll past the story.

You forgot to account for the time involved in posting about how obnoxious the article is. It actually takes 136.1 seconds. Longer if they're concerned about Karma.

Re:Why do we care?

[reidspice]

may seem obvious to most but, if you're not using 1.5, FF 1.0.x certainly won't tell you that 1.5 RC3 is out with its green arrow either...

Re:Why do we care?

[cyberbob2010]

Why do we worry about every M$ update? Because enough people use it that every little change could have a big impact overall and M$ isnt exactly known for doing handling their updates right (*cough security* *cough*) As for Firefox, he is completely right Why do we make such a big deal out of it? BECAUSE MILLIONS USE IT!!! you don't see everyone getting excited every time I update my little script that translates english into klingon do you? no, because peoples bus. dont count on it. Same reason we see every update about Apache and Linux etc...

Re:Why do we care?

[ToasterofDOOM]

Well, firefox is one of the few notable pieces of OSS that have spread so amazingly fast without slowing down, and is already one of the most popular OSS works. I agree that an RC shouldn't make front page though, maybe developers.

Re:Why do we care?

[leighklotz]

If it is Emacs, yes.
I now use Emacs to control my Elecraft K2.

Re:Why do we care?

[ScrewMaster]

Enough of the RC updates.

Yeah, no shit ... considering that Firefox already notified me with that cute little focus-stealing upgrade box.

Re:Why do we care?

[NateE]

Q. Why does Slashdot have a story on every minor Firefox release?

A. So we can dicuss which of our favorite extensions stopped working or were finally updated.

TextZoom is the only one that I really wish was updated and working properly. All 15 other ones I use are working great.

Re:Why do we care?

[an_mo]

that's only becaues rc3 is not an official stable release

And not a moment too soon!

[base_chakra]

Last night, just after killing FF's process due to another hang, I restarted the app and was immediately greeted with the updater's announcement of a new version. I thought it was a glitch since neither the updater nor the About box indicated that this was indeed a new release candidate.

Another RC already?

[the computer guy nex]

I love FireFox as much as the next guy but we need to stop bragging about "100 million downloads !!!" when a new version is out every few weeks.

Re:Another RC already?

[Anonymous Coward]

why? everyone is doing same. for exemple micro-soft
count it user base(legit and non-legit install) from windows
update service. they dont substract query for who format and
have to download all the patchs over again.
They also dont count removed install from new PC.

Anyway, they say "100 million downloads !!!" not 100m users.

Re:Another RC already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I have to rehash the "Would you jump off a cliff if everyone else did?" argument that you probably got told when you were 3 years old?

Re:Another RC already?

[GweeDo]

You don't count twice in that 100 million my friend. If you are getting your updates via the update server (as any good 1.5 user should be) you aren't counted. If you go to getfirefox.com and download from the same IP address as before, you don't count. I am sure there are some duplicates, but I highly doubt it is any kind of problem like you are wanting to make it out to be.

Re:Another RC already?

[asavage]

This is wrong for several reasons:

1. Updates aren't counted
2. Download.com, Google, and other mirrors aren't counted
3. Bundled installations (IE with a Linux distribution) aren't counted.
4. Some single downloads are installed many times in offices etc.
5. FTP, apt-get, etc. aren't counted

Only people who go to mozilla.org and download from there are counted.

Re:Another RC already?

[Anonymous Coward]

3. Bundled installations (IE with a Linux distribution) aren't counted.

Well if you are geing IE with a Linux distribution, it shouldn't count for Moz anyway!

This is supposed to be funny....

Re:Another RC already?

[webzone]

To my knowledge, nightlies, alphas, betas and release candidates are not counted in the number of total downloads.

Re:Another RC already?

[blazerw11]

IE with a Linux distribution

NOOOOOOO! Why would you want that?

Re:Another RC already?

[timeOday]

Why? 100 million is a huge number of downloads, and really says something about how widespread the program is. (Unless you can name a program that's been downloaded 100 million times and isn't widespread).

If you're misinterpreting the number to mean something it doesn't, that's your problem.

Re:Another RC already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they wouldnt have so many downloads if they posted the damn MD5SUM on their download page (!).

Re:Another RC already?

[Spy der Mann]

IE with a Linux distribution
NOOOOOOO! Why would you want that?

You're a wizard, Gandalf, take the IE, take it! TAKE IT!!

Re:Another RC already?

[shish]

Isn't it about time this comment got put on the "copy & paste trolls" list, alongside "quake 3 is hard to install" and "piracy killed my music store"? It's been refuted so many times, it never provokes any discussion that hasn't been said a hundred times before :/

Re:Another RC already?

[jcorno]

If you are getting your updates via the update server (as any good 1.5 user should be) you aren't counted.

That's assuming the automatic updates are working. I had to do manual updates right up until they fixed the problem in RC1, and that meant downloading from the Firefox page. (The problem was that it would get stuck in a cycle of downloading the upgrade and failing the install.) I still agree with you that it wouldn't lead to a huge inflation of the numbers, but I can't be the only one who's chalked up half a dozen downloads.

Unknown upgrade

[at_18]

My firefox prompted me a few hours ago about an "important upgrade", which I did. But it didn't say what this upgrade was about, and therefore I don't know if I'm running RC3 or not. It would be nice to know what has been downloaded.

Re:Unknown upgrade

[y0bhgu0d]

look under your help->about dialog, 20051111 is the build date at the very bottom for rc3

Re:Unknown upgrade

[FCon4]

My firefox prompted me a few hours ago about an "important upgrade", which I did. But it didn't say what this upgrade was about, and therefore I don't know if I'm running RC3 or not. It would be nice to know what has been downloaded.

If you really want to know what is about to be downloaded, I believe the proper time for such thoughts would be before agreeing to receive it. But that's just me.

Re:Unknown upgrade

[WoodieR]

click Help --> About, usually, displays something useful ...

A bit late :P

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a bit late. :P

If you're running any of the 1.5 release candidates you might have automatically downloaded the latest incremental update a while ago, and hit 1.5 proper.

I got updated to 1.5RC3 a few days ago (probably around when you submitted the article...) and tonight I got bumped up to 1.5. I think they must be releasing via the auto update first to stagger the release load...

Much faster, Plugins are updated, Source

[tronicum]

I tried RC1 and now I swichted at my work PC to RC3, too. It checks if your plugins are working and gets you the latest updates (in my case adblock+ and pdf download). Compared to the 1.4 debian package it renders pages much faster, but (at least with Linux) the font rendering changed a bit. Even this textarea text is now smoothed (a bit to much for my taste) but I enoy the speed.

Good work Mozilla. I can't wait to see the source to look if they cleaned it up yeat. Last time I built mozilla from scratch is was filled with switches which where not supported for ages (like native qt support).

In related news...

[Leffe]

In related news, the fifth hourly Firefox build of today just finished building OMG OMG OMG!!!

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the fifth hourly Firefox build...."

Apparently, you've never actually built FF. ;)

Re:In related news...

[Leffe]

Yeah, I know it takes like 7 minutes or so (3 or so for the fastest machine), but they are commonly referred to as ``hourly'' (using terrorist quotes to annoy people). Hm, interesting, only the slowest machine actually takes more than an hour.

old bug still not fixed

[potaz]

And the truncating title text bug that arbitrarily drops information from websites still hasn't been fixed. It's now five years old! Hooray!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45375

I think Moz is a great project, but I use Opera because things like this are allowed to linger for um, half a decade, instead of being fixed.

Re:old bug still not fixed

[Feneric]

My favorite is the ugly black blobs in tooltips bug. It affects pretty much every platform, and is readily obvious to even casual non-tech users and really an embarrassment for anyone trying to encourage others to use Firefox.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67127

Re:old bug still not fixed

[RockHorn]

I love this excerpt from the bug report:

-- Mozilla is not a corporate product. It is a community project and as such it is
-- not in competition with anything other than itself. Regardless of whether or
-- not "the corporate world" makes use of it, mozilla development will continue for
-- as long as the community is interested and at the rate the community contributes.

-- Mozilla developers are not corporate employees. They are volunteers and as such
-- they do not contribute to mozilla for the sake of making money. Regardless of
-- "where the money is," mozilla developers will continue to contribute for as long
-- as they are interested and at whatever rate they desire.

Truly long before the Mozilla corporation was envisioned!

Re:old bug still not fixed

[TheDormouse]

Why are you putting such long or weird text in title attributes anyway? Being attributes, title="foo" shouldn't be a critically important part of a web page anyhow. I've never come across a useful site that actually uses title attributes that expose this bug.

Sure the bug should be fixed, but it's not a release blocker for sure.

And so you know: Don't delay! Bugzilla is accepting patches for this bug now!

Re:old bug still not fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

And so you know: Don't delay! Bugzilla is accepting patches for this bug now!

A patch that might actually fix the problem? I think they're too busy not applying all of the patches that they've already got. You wouldn't want to, you know, fix the problem. Then someone might make a tool-tip that's "too long" or you might end up being "corporate" or something.

There has to be a better way that doesn't fix the problem, that's what I say.

Bugs solved from RC2

[darteaga]

http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/200 5/11/17/15rc3-available/

Notice that RC will be the final version if there are no new bugs.

Re:Bugs solved from RC2

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that RC will be the final version if there are no new bugs.

No way?! It's almost like this release is some sort of candidate, which they may release. I guess you could say it's a Release Candidate. What an amazing concept!

Re:Bugs solved from RC2

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that RC will be the final version if there are no new bugs.

Then if they just renamed RC2 to RC3 there wouldn't be any new bugs, case closed.

Too bad they only started to work on SVG support this October...

Re:Bugs solved from RC2

[NightFears]

The first bug listed forced me to rewrite a substantial portion of my current web application, because I didn't really have much hope they would fix it in 1.5. Well, embedded tags are invalid HTML, anyway, so this probably was a good thing.

Re:A bit late :P

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It may say "Firefox 1.5" in the About box, but it is one of RC2 or RC3 at this point. It doesn't say "RC" in the version string because then it would not, in fact, be a candidate for release; they would have to change the version string and rebuild.

Mozilla are doing thing The Right Way, which is rare these days. They even follow the proper definition of Alpha & Beta, which is even rarer.

Good, if you are running a RC: Help - Check for..

[amcdiarmid]

I have been running rc2, and it works well but it does have some freezing issues.

From http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/200 5/11/17/15rc3-available/ (The release notes blog):

        * A recent regression that either crashes or breaks certain usages of innerHTML for dynamic applications. (315189/315999)
        * A recent regression and most common RC2 crash (316025)

Hopefully, this will resolve most of my issues.

Remember, if you can't wait a day or so for the auto update: Help -> Check for Updates. (If you are running a RC of 1.5)

Kudos for the dev team.

Fixed drag and drop

[BenjyD]

They fixed the drag-and-drop crashes I was seeing all the time in RC1/2. It was getting really annoying having the browser lockup all the time whenever I accidentally dragged a tab or some text.

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Bullfish]

So, this happens on sites all over the net. News is disseminated instantly over a large number of sites instantaneously. What makes slashdot good are the users who make good comments. You want a better site, quit whining and do that. The commentary is why I come here and digg's is not that good. Tech news I can get almost anywhere.

As for politics, more and more it is impacting the nerds of world due to nervous politicians and evil content companies pressuring them. We would be remiss to ignore it.

This thread is for FF RC3. I got mine automatically yesterday with no hitches. Considering how the last time I got an upgrade message it flopped about four times, this was an improvement.

Website says it....

[Donniedarkness]

As of last night (when I submitted the story), the official site mentioned it.

Anyways, I can't see much different in this version, but it's supposed to fix some bugs.

Re:A bit late :P

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually, you're not running 1.5 -- yet. You're most likely running 1.5 RC3. "Release candidate", you see, implies it is one of the versions likely to be the final one.

If no problems are found, RC3 will be considered the final version. Then, and only then, will you *actually* have Firefox 1.5. Since its version number is already 1.5, no updates will be necessary.

Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

[frankie]

The "About Mozilla Firefox" box only says 1.5 (Build 2005111116), nothing specifically says RC3.

However, the release notes are now up.

Re:Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

[dolphinling]

To quote Asa Dotzler,

For those wondering why this is called Firefox 1.5 and not Firefox 1.5 RC2, it's because this is a genuine release candidate. The build you have, if no problems are found, will be Firefox 1.5. If we called it RC2 in the actual client, it wouldn't be a real release candidate because we'd have to make changes to the name and then create new builds.

Re:Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT??? What kind of BS is that?

You get a release, tag it as FF 1.5 RC9, and ship it for test.

Everyhing ready to go? No? Rince, lather, and repeat.

Yes? Fire up your favorite hex editor, and change the SINGLE occurance of RC9 to "space space space". Ta daa, all ready to go. Don't like trailing spaces? Then \0\0\0. Don't like that? Then add a trailing space to the original string and change it to "PROD".

"But wait", I hear, "I've changed the binary and must test again!" Yeah, if changing the version stamp to " " crashes your build, it's *NOT* ready to go no matter WHAT the testers say.

"But wait", I hear, "I've got my version stamp in thousands of places!" Then declare a public static string and point to that, saving each release thousands of bytes in wasted space. Or learn how to code.

"But wait", I hear, "I can't build the true binary directly from the source." If it's only one occurance, _yes you can_. Or if absolufuckinglutely nothing else, run a patch script against the final output.

It's BITS, not magic. Harry Potter does magic (just check JK's bank account) while *WE* do bits.

I'd MUCH rather do that (have all tagged builds and patch the ultimate binary) than have 5 versions of "the same thing" running around when it's *NOT* "the same thing".

Re:Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

[mikefe]

You can alwasy tell by build date...

But what about the plugin manager ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal.

Unless they've fixed the plugin manager so that it stops annoying me about not having flash installed.

No thankyou I don't want flash installing. Not now, not ever. So stop annoying me you clods.

Re:But what about the plugin manager ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll get fixed when you patch it. Here's the source code; go nuts. On *nix systems at least, here's the offending source code line.

Re:But what about the plugin manager ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pointing me to the right place in the source.

I'll have a go at doing just that when I get home (I'm not a native C coder but I can read it quite well...)

Screw the new features I just want to browse without being bugged by advertising crap - i.e. Flash, ANimated GIFs, FUcking floating DIV crap etc. etc. etc. etc.

Re:But what about the plugin manager ?

[HermanAB]

Use links. It has none of those annoyaces you mention.

has been just been released

[thebdj]

has been just been released

I hear the new RC has a grammar and spell check that automatically fixes slashdot before it loads...

Re:has been just been released

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? How about a misleading article title corrector or a biased editorial comment remover?

Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[kekec]

Every time I use firefox and open a few tabs my vm size goes to 1GB. It's getting ridiculous how developers of firefox are ignoring to fix this problem. I hope they fixed this otherwise it gets uninstalled once IE 7 comes out Apart from tabbed browsing and few cool addons It's just not worth it in my opinion.

Re:Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[bunratty]

Every time I use firefox and open a few tabs my vm size goes to 1GB.

Don't post about it in Slashdot. If you want the problem fixed, you need to submit a proper bug report in Bugzilla.

Re:Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

this guy did for a similar bug and the FF devs refused to fix it.

Lesson learned? FF devs don't care about quality control of their code and admonish users who try to help.

People are posting to Slashdot because nothing is happening. These and related bugs are not getting fixed and have been lingering for years. Many of my friends and family have given up. They are loyal Opera users.

Re:Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots: Firefox crashed! Waaa! Fix it immediately or I'm switching to
Mozilla Developers: Tell us what happened.
Idiots: It crashed! I was just browsing some pages and it crashed. I demand a fix!
Mozilla Developers: No, that's no good. Tell us EXACTLY what happened.
Idiots: IT CRASHED!
Mozilla Developers: We can not fix a bug if we don't know what the bug is. "It crashed" is not useful. Tell us something useful and we might be able to actually do something.
Idiots: That's IT! I've had enough of you not listening to me! IT CRASHED! What more do you need to know?
Mozilla Developers (banging head against desk): Forget it. Just go away.

I don't see that as unreasonable. Not at all. The Mozilla developers can not fix a bug without enough information to reproduce the bug, track down the cause. In fact, where they have managed to get enough information about a crash or a hang bug to fix it, they have fixed it.

Now, that "bug" you pointed to is not a bug. It's a possibly unrelated set of symptoms, which could be caused by any number of known or unknown real bugs. It's not likely that excessive memory usage, crashing and hanging, all in different circumstances, are all caused by a single bug. So they're not "refusing" to investigate a bug. "Firefox doesn't work perfectly" is NOT A BUG!

By the way, it's not as if Opera is immune from crash or hang bugs either.

Re:Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[Futurepower(R)]

You are ignoring the fact that the bug is very easy to reproduce, and that it is difficult for non-programmers to characterize.

Re:Did they fix memory leak problems yet

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

You are doing a PERFECT job of showing what is wrong with much (not all) of the open source movement. This total arrogance on the part of developers when it comes to responding to the user and dealing with code maintainence/quality issues.

1. No one is demanding a fix. We're not entitled to anything. Many of us are quite happy (such as I) to keep using a browser that leaks more than my infant cousin. My friends are happy to use Opera (which, despite what you think, does NOT crash or leak, period). You'd think the developers would appreciate the fact that we are giving them feedback. The #1 complaint I see from OSS devs is the lack of feedback from the end-user.

2. We've told them in quite specific detail how to reproduce the crashes and memory leaks (in the case of leaks, just leave the fucking browser open for a few hours after visiting a bunch of websites - any websites).

Now, that "bug" you pointed to is not a bug. It's a possibly unrelated set of symptoms, which could be caused by any number of known or unknown real bugs. It's not likely that excessive memory usage, crashing and hanging, all in different circumstances, are all caused by a single bug. So they're not "refusing" to investigate a bug. "Firefox doesn't work perfectly" is NOT A BUG!

Oh please. What a load of shit.

A bug can be a behavior or symptom caused by any number of code/design issues. Stop trying to redefine away the fact that Firefox has major issues that are NOT GETTING FIXED (all at the same time that FF fanbois such as yourself are tooting your horns about being so much better than MSIE, codewise).

I don't see that as unreasonable. Not at all. The Mozilla developers can not fix a bug without enough information to reproduce the bug, track down the cause. In fact, where they have managed to get enough information about a crash or a hang bug to fix it, they have fixed it.

What are they asking for? We've told them how to reproduce the fucking problems. Beyond that, I can't help. I'm not taking time out to do the job that the programmers should be doing themselves just to tell them were the offending lines of code are.

Frankly, if a little bit more time was spent designing, testing, and analyzing code (ala OpenBSD), alot of these bugs would never crop up.

Opera of course has bugs, but quite less than Firefox does. When you have a problem with something, they are GLAD to hear about it and they don't basically tell the user "fuck off, we don't care". I've never had Opera crash for me, personally, or eat away hundreds of megs of ram with only one website open.

Re:A bit late :P

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Lord man! What is it with the English on this site this morning?

"I got updated to 1.5RC3"

"I have been updated to 1.5RC3"

or better in an active rather than passive voice,

"I updated to 1.5RC3"

Memory leakage

[Anonymous Coward]

Has that pesky memory leakage problem been solved or what? You know, that thing when you dl-ed pr0n for hours and after closing FF you'd ctrl-alt-del-ed to see that FF still uses a *HUGE* sh1tl04d of memory.

Significance?

[beforewisdom]

Is there anything user visible and interesting with this release?

Re:Significance?

[dolphinling]

Burning edge hasn't updated, but from my own trawlings through bonsai, the following checkins were made:

• Bug 313335 Update the URL bar before showing security warnings r+sr=jag a=asa
• Fix bug 316025 -- no need to create a wrapper on plugin teardown if we don't have one already. r+sr=jst, a=mscott
• Bug #315189 --> Loading this url crashes [@ nsHTMLDocument::MatchLinks] Camino and Firefox Fix a probme with inline style rules on innerDiv elements that was breaking Yahoo! webmail. patch by bz r/sr=jst a=me
• bug 316674, compare-locales should support reasonable numbers of ordered search engines, r=gandalf, sr=bsmedberg, a=mscott,chase

The end user visible ones would be the first, second, and third.

Lucky you

[matt me]

Lucky you. When the first version of 1.5 came out, after trying it on Linux that was an infinitely quicker and smoother browser, I installed on my parents computer. About a week a later I found out one of them had managed to 'upgrade' back to version 1.0 and it's buggy slowness.

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Antifuse]

Umm... I don't pay anything for Slashdot, I dunno about you.

Re:WTF?

[dolphinling]

Or "People are actually trying to do work there, and they can't if the server's down".

MSIE activescript

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't know, MS IE can run perl and python scripts just like javascript (as long as the programs are installed), with &ltscript="python"&gt ... &lt/script&gt.

Why not Mozilla?
If mozilla allows this then opera will follow and people will be able to put python/perl/anything scripts into their web pages instead of the braindamaged javascript language. Plus we'll also avoid the AJAX hype stories every now and then on the media sites.

But seems like mozilla likes the fact that they have the control of the javascript vm and they wouldn't like to lose it! Props MS!

Re:MSIE activescript

[Justin_Schuh]

MS uses ActiveX scripting objects to support additional languages, so doing it the MS way would require blanket support for ActiveX. That actually wouldn't be difficult to do in FF for Windows, but it leaves FF out in the cold on every other platform. It also sets a really bad precedent.

This could also be supported through the plugin architecture, but that puts us back in the 90's, where sites commonly required proprietary binary plugins or ActiveX controls. We already know that's a developmental dead end and a security nightmare. The current JavaScript architecture however, is an open ECMA spec that is directly addressed in the W3C standards. The presense of and adherence to these standards is one one the major factors contributing to the current explosion of new web technologies. I agree that AJAX is a silly buzzword, but at least it's keeping browser and web developers focused on standards support and interoperability.

I do think there is still a vacuum for a language Nuetral VM with a strong security sandbox that can hook into the DOM. Java applets should have filled this niche, but Sun repeatedly botched the delivery. MS .NET client web controls are another option, and Mono can provide support on non-MS platforms. Unfortunately these don't really seem to be going anywhere. I'd really like to see something in this arena catch on, but interoperability and security are essential for that to happen. And blind scripting interfaces won't provide that.

Now, language independence for extensions and internal development is a different issue. If you had done a little research you would see that Mozilla has had Python support for years, but it's not in the release versions. A little more research would probably land you at the Gecko roadmap where you'd find some info on the language neutral DOM interface in Gecko 1.9. Poking a little further would probably lead you to XULRunner. At that point I hope you will see that the intent of the development is quite intelligent and open. The fact is that it just takes time to get there and there are lot of factors to consider.

P.S. - I'd also suggest taking a closer look at JavaScript before calling it a brain-dead language. It's far from perfect, but certainly more intelligible and maintainable than Perl when used properly. And for it's target environment it actually works quite well.

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[tgd]

You come here for the commentary?

Slashdot's got all the depth of a bunch of twelve year olds standing around trying to act smarter than the other by using big words they hope the others don't know.

Slashdot is where you go for comedy and narrow minded technical uneducated opinions, not quality commentary.

And to keep on topic, FF RC3 updated without a hitch on my Mac at home this morning, but I've had no luck updating my Windows install at work. It bombs out saying a file is in use.

Sucks.

Alright, alright

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Firefox release candidate gets an article. Why is there all this frustrated sexual tension between Slashdot and Firefox? Geez, just fuck and get it over with.

Features

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
(been up since last night)

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

tell me about it

[Ender Ryan]

This is one of my "favorite" annoyances with windowing systems in general these days. I think there's actually tools to prevent apps from stealing each other's focus* - I dunno, I haven't really used Windows for other than gaming in a long while, so I don't bother dicking around with it much - on 'doze and Mac. But, like FF, many apps automatically shift their own focus at inopportune times.

That drives me even more insane than usual. There is absolutely nothing like cancelling a long download or initiating a time-consuming update, or hell, REBOOTING THE FUCKING SYSTEM, because of that.

* Actually, I think TweakUI might do just that. I may even have it installed with that option set on my Windows box. It's just a bit too long in the tooth to play the latest games, so I haven't used it lately.

Re:tell me about it

[Nick Number]

TweakUI says it will, but it doesn't really work. Apps continue to steal focus left and right.

Re:tell me about it

[Dan Ost]

You can configure FVWM to not allow apps to grab focus without permission. I would suspect that other Linux WMs allow for that too.

You're on your own in windows.

Re:tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not 100% sure, but I think apps that do that set the ForegroundLockTimeout* to whatever they want, completely ignorant of any settings you changed yourself. If the app is well behaved it will revert the timeout to the original value after it has stolen focus. Isn't that considerate?

* "Specifies the time, following user input, during which the system keeps applications from moving into the foreground." -MSDN

Re:tell me about it

[Crayon Kid]

TweakUI says it will, but it doesn't really work. Apps continue to steal focus left and right.

Under which version of Windows? It works perfectly for me, under Win2K.

Re:tell me about it

[Crayon Kid]

You can configure FVWM to not allow apps to grab focus without permission. I would suspect that other Linux WMs allow for that too.
You're on your own in windows.

Actually, from a usability point of view, this feature is very easy to implement on Windows and nearly impossible on Linux window managers.

The only ways to willingly produce new windows in MS Windows is to click a desktop icon, or something on the panel (menu, quick launch, systray). The trick is that these actions unfocus all windows. So when the new window pops up, it either:

a) Finds nothing focused, and assumes focus itself.
or
b) You've grown bored because Firefox took so long to load :) and focused something else, in which case the new window does not "steal" focus.

The other case is new windows produced without user intervention. Those are easy to take care of both in Windows and X.

However, without the "unfocus everything" trick, in X this feature quickly becomes a major pain in the butt.

Think about it. Under Linux there are many more ways to produce new windows: keygrabbers implementing shortcuts, dockapps, wm-specific menus (like Fluxbox or RoX have), panels, and so on. There are MANY applications that could allow the use to spawn windows, and they can't just get up and tell the wm "unfocus everything before that window appears". It's crazy.

Would you like to use a key combo and your terminal to come up unfocused? Would you like to click on "options" and the prefs window to appear unfocused? Would you like to click a menu entry, a systray icon or a launcher and the window to come up in the background? Eh, not exactly not you wanted, right? Too bad, because that's what happens with this feature under X.

Re:tell me about it

[Nick Number]

It was under XP Pro (which uses a different version of TweakUI than 2K).

I hadn't tested the problem in a while, and I'm unable to reproduce it now. Perhaps it was something that got fixed in SP2.

Re:tell me about it

[Burz]

On the Mac, the apps's dock icon will just jump up and down for a while without stealing focus. The modal dialog will be there waiting for you when the app is selected.

Did they fix the memory leaks?

[krelian]

I love firefox, but after using it extensively for a couple of hours it occupies about a third of my available memory and a lot of VM. I know that there are a lot of complains about this but I have found no solution. This should definitely be the top priority for firefox developers.

Re:Did they fix the memory leaks?

[Derek Pomery]

The amount of memory it consumes depends a great deal on how much you have available.
At least this is what I've found, given I've been running Mozilla Suite and Firefox (on the Linux and Windows sides, respectively) on a laptop with 96MB of memory.
On linux, I can tell exactly how much swap was being used (0) and the suite was consuming (10MB).
Running it for a while of course raised those values, but not significantly.
It'd be interesting if a dev could provide a bit more info on this, because I found it to be rather curious.

And of course for the complainers who use Windows. At least you *know* how much memory Firefox uses, and can close it if you need the memory for something else. This is definitely not true of MSHTML.DLL or (far too often) iexplore.exe.

Re:Did they fix the memory leaks?

[Combination Expert]

I read long time ago somewhere that 1.5 (previously intended to be 2.0) is supposed to fix memory bugs. Unfortunately, I could not find any statement from description page that memory leaks were indeed fixed in this version. Anyway, here is a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24946 9 (copy and paste in new tab). Note how many bugs were marked as duplicates of this bug. Do we need to submit more bug reports on this bug, or will somebody working on it clarify the situation?

Some extension was specifically created to save session so that people would be able to save session, exit FF, free leaked memory, start FF, and load saved session. This is really ridiculous - to have some extension to bypass bug instead of fixing bug.

In my case I have 512 Mb of memory and have to restart FF at least once a week. This is quite undesirable for my work since I like to keep some pages open for reference (scientific research) for a while. Also, few sites require login, and restarting FF even with that extension is not that simple.

In my opinion, this bug is the most important thing that makes me question the usability of FF. Really, I need to adjust my browsing behavior in order to deal with this bug, and constantly check task manager (>300Mb => restart).

Re:Did they fix the memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the same memory problems with FF. For some reason it's miserable at downloads. If I've browsed for a while and see a funny photoshop on Fark I want to save it takes literally 20 seconds from selecting save to see anything happen. Meanwhile the system freezes. IE nor Opera have this problem. Both of them seem to just copy the file out of cache to where I want it, but FF behaves differently. Is this even being addressed?

Looks like version 1.5 to me.

[cpdsaorg]

After getting back to my desk I saw the update window for Firefox. After clicking on it it restarted and the new Help>About window shows 1.5. Nothing about 1.5-rc3.

One thing I find a little dissapointing is that it does not save the links to the pages you were surfing but instead brings you to your default home pages. While I know this might be a little hard to do or deal with due to post information on some pages but it would be nice for firefox to attempt to bring you back to the place you were before.

Re:Looks like version 1.5 to me.

[ChazeFroy]

RC1 and RC2 exhibited the same behavior.

Re:Looks like version 1.5 to me.

[staticsage]

One thing I find a little dissapointing is that it does not save the links to the pages you were surfing but instead brings you to your default home pages. While I know this might be a little hard to do or deal with due to post information on some pages but it would be nice for firefox to attempt to bring you back to the place you were before.

Never used it myself, but this seems like it would do what you want:

SessionSaver - https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=436

"SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing -- they're all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clicking will delete."

Re:A bit late :P

[Hobbes828]

Ummm.. because you are not doing the updating, that is why "have been updated" or "got updated" is more correct, the active voice would be It updated me, because that way in all cases the subject, I, is the direct object.

(No i don't use perfect spelling or grammar or usually correct people, but if you are going to criticize, i suppose it's only fair).

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes slashdot good are the users who make good comments.

For a very strange definition of "good", I'm sure.

Parent is not a troll!

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

It is serious. I have the same issues, up to 1.5 rc2 and the 1.0.x series.

I just upgraded tp rc3 but its too early to tell if that was fixed.

The parent should be modded up - this is a LONGSTANDING issue that has not gotten any attention.

I have 1GB of RAM (FF usually peaks at about 160MB for me before I restart it) so I dont care that much, but I know lots of users on lo-mem systems who are highly annoyed by this behavior and switched to Opera. I think this kind of thing should be a high priority critical/major bug and receive attention ASAP.

Re:Parent is not a troll!

[mholt108]

Yeah i got annoyed with it and tried opera but it is just not as intuitive, so i tried IE7 with tabs but it does not seem to let me make it behave the way i want. So i put up with firefox and shut it down once in a while - it is worth it for the intuitive way they use tabs/right click/bookmarks.

Re:Parent is not a troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, the gp isn't a troll, and it is a serious issue. Thank goodness I have sessionsaver, so I can restart regularly without losing my place. It *has* gotten attention though, it just hasn't actually been tracked down. I've seen a number of people who seemed to actively be working on it.

As for switching to opera, sorry but I think they are insane. One of my friends is a rabid Opera fan, and indeed it was this particular bug that almost made me switch. One particularly bad day, while I was waiting for firefox to restart after it had gotten over 300MB, I started talking to him about it.

Me: so how much memory is reserved for opera on your system right now?
Him: Where do I check that?
Me: google for process explorer, and check the "private bytes". that's the most accurate thing I've seen that reports the memory usage (including swap) of a program.
Him: Ok got it. It says right now it is only using 685 MB, but I only have about 30 tabs open.
Me: you mean 68.5 MB. that's better than mine. I was at about 40 tabs in ff and using 300+. it sucked
Him: No, it says 685,455 K. Your firefox only used 300MB of memory with that many tabs? Are you sure?
Me: yes I'm sure, and that's awful. when I first start it up, I'm only about 100MB with all those tabs open. 685MB is insane
Him: It's not so bad. How much RAM do you have?
Me: 512 MB on my laptop
Him: Oh, I've got 2 GB on my desktop. I guess that why I didn't notice.
Me: Does it use that much even after a restart?
Him: Hold on, I'll restart and let you know.
Me: ...
Me: hey are you still there?
Him: Yeah, hold on, its still shutting down.
Me: k
Me: well? you still there? it's been like 5 mins
Him: Yeah, fine, hold on, it is almost shut down now.
Me: ...
Him: OK, now it's starting back up.
Me: You've got to be kidding, ff restarted a long time ago for me. I mean, its been over 8 minutes so far...
Him: Yeah, this is normal, it has to save all the session info, so it takes longer than Firefox to restart.
Me: I have session saver! All my stuff is saved too!
Him: Really? Well, anyway, I checked and yeah, its about 680 MB again.
Me: You should really think about switching from opera to ff
Him: Well, I didn't know you could save sessions in Firefox, too. Maybe I will at least give it a try. But I also like how I can switch my User Agent so I can pretend I am running IE for those annoying corporate sites. Plus I can drag and drop my tabs to new locations, which is really handy. You should give Opera a try and see how nice it is.
Me: there's extensions for those too. why don't I go get the links for the session saver, user agent switcher, tabmix, etc, to make things easier for you
Him: Cool.

Guess what. He's still using Firefox now, after 2 months, and he says it is much faster than opera, except on forward and backward buttons. I've told him they expect to switch that to opera's behaviour with this latest upgrade, so he's happy to have everything be faster soon.

Broken

[jofi]

Will not work correctly on any OS if you install it as root/administrator to a folder where non-admin/non-root users don't have write access to.

You have to run it as root/admin first to avoid this error message: Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration. Please contact the author about this problem.

Sure I could run it as admin first, but that is completely unacceptable. No better than what most Windows devs pull off.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31148 0
Not present in 1.0.7 and lower.

Re:Broken

[icydog]

I don't think this is completely unacceptable. You have to install it as root/admin to begin with, so just imagine that running Firefox one time as root/admin is simply the last step in the installation process.

Having said that, I can't imagine it being too hard for the installer to initialize the installation without manually having to run Firefox. Why don't they?

"Unofficial" Firefox 1.5 RC3 changelog

[jZnat]

How great of both TFA and the Firefox 1.5 "What's New" page to not mention the Unofficial Firefox 1.5 RC3 changelog from The Burning Edge.

Updated

[franksp]

Mozilla site already has a page describing RC3:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/

Now linked on the official website

[Anonymous Coward]

RC3 has now been linked on the main Mozilla.org page. Please use the regular download page instead of the link in the article so that a mirror can be chosen instead of hammering that one site.

Are pop-ups fixed yet?

[DroopyStonx]

I'm assuming this is some sort of exploit, or workaround for Firefox, that people have figured out, but I frequently get unwanted popups, mainly from bullshit sites like casalemedia and fastclick.

I'm trying to find some examples I can link to for this post, but go figure - when I need to show it, not there! Typically if you search for "[band] lyrics" - those lyrics sites have tons of popups.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you using Firefox know what I'm talking about.

What's up with this?

Re:Are pop-ups fixed yet?

[blaksaga]

Popups from flash embedded objects are not blocked. There is a preference in mozilla's firefox extension, however, that allows you to block them.

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

Re:Are pop-ups fixed yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Tools->Options->Web Features, click on the Advanced tab next to Enable Javascript and uncheck Raise or lower windows.

Re:Are pop-ups fixed yet?

[jesser]

Assuming:
* You're using Firefox 1.5 RC2 or RC3 rather than Firefox 1.0.x.
* You understand that pop-ups that occur when you click in the content area cannot be blocked without breaking half of the web.

then the only bug I know about that you could be hitting is bug 313337. And fastclick is indeed taking advantage of that bug -- that's how I found out about it. I encourage you to check the site's code, though; if there are other ways for sites to get around pop-up blocking, we want to know about them.

Mobile phones too

[ThreeDayMonk]

(Slightly veering away from the topic) Mobile phones also annoy me in this regard. If I'm typing a message, browing a menu, or doing something else on my phone and someone calls, the phone switches straight into answering mode, in which the button I was just about to press has a completely different function. It's then a matter of complete chance whether I answer or reject the call, or send it to voice mail.

This problem could easily be solved: when the phone changes modes due to an event not initiated by the user, disable the buttons for a couple of seconds to allow the user to react to the change of state. Do any phones do this? I've not seen one that does.

Re:Mobile phones too

[drinkypoo]

Motorola Triplets phones (V300, V500, V600, and others, but those are the primaries) which are quad-band GSM if you have the right software on them wait a moment before updating buttons. It actually really annoys the piss out of me when I'm calling voicemail and want to use speakerphone, because it does it on outgoing calls, too. The phones (or at least the v300) have about 5MB of storage and will do mp3 ringtones, java/midp 2.0, and has a VGA-res camera. Plus, there's a lot of "hacking" tools so you can enable locked-out features and such.

I Have Firefox 1.5???

[tropo3050]

I too awoke to the green arrow signaling an upgrade. I love differential upgrades; this time the arrow was there for just about half a second. Now, here's the interesting part: When I go to the "About Mozilla Firefox" dialog, it says "Version 1.5". AND, when I go into about:config and look at the general.useragent.extra.firefox value, it reads Firefox/1.5. What do you all see when you look at the aforementioned values? Should I be seeing "Firefox 1.5 RC 3" or is this the norm? My theory is that Mozilla is rolling out 1.5 on a few machines, and will ramp it up as we approach the final, public release.

Open source testing.

[Spy der Mann]

Not to be a troll or anything, but why does slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox to be worthy of a story?

Because slashdotters tend to be the perfect beta-testers. They're many, they're tech-savvy, and they're eager to try out new things. After all, this is open source development (another thing /.'ers love), and we love to participate on it. And if we can help improve IExploder's competition, why not?

Confirm

[thecpuguru]

Got 2 auto updates in the last week.

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Bullfish]

Yes, yes I do come here for the commentary. Most of the time it is very good if you set your preferences right. Do you get goofballs, sure, show me a site where you don't. Frankly, it's people like you who lower the bar. Another whiner who instead of taking his/her show on the road to a site more suitable to you sits here and cries.

Don't like us, hang on here and I'll get you a lollipop.

Why do we care? Because FireFox does the job!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we care? Because FireFox is one of the most important pieces of software out there, if for no other reason than it works so well that it makes M$ actually work at making IE truly more useful to the consumer.

What in technology is more critical than the Internet? Hence, what software is more critical than the browser that gives you more utility, power, freedom, and peace of mind?

I'd like to continue to hear about these releases, thank you.

CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[Futurepower(R)]

Firefox 1.5 RC2 notes:

The CPU hogging bug in RC2, in which Firefox eventually begins using 98% CPU time, is much worse than in release versions of Firefox. The hibernation bug is far worse, too.

Even though there have been reports from many people, and even though the bug is easily demonstrated, Mozilla developers refuse to investigate this bug. Below is a quote from comment #45 of Bugzilla bug 222660.

The URL is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22266 0#c45, but it must be copied into a new browser window, since Bugzilla does not accept people coming from Slashdot.

------- Comment #45 From Mike Connor 2005-11-15 10:14 PST [reply] -------

Do we have crash and hang bugs? Sure, absolutely, just search on bugs marked critical. Is this particular bug which is basically saying "bad things happen sometimes" of any use? Not at all. There are bugs on memory leaks, many of which have been fixed for 1.5, same with crashes, and the hibernation issue you mentioned.

I'm going to mark this particular bug as INVALID again, because it is of a vast and unfixable scope. Sooner or later, if you browse enough sites, you can hit a crash bug. That doesn't mean its the same crash (code flaw) every time, or a single fix can change that.

I find this admission revealing. I would not have guessed that Firefox crash bugs are so prevalent.

If you are experiencing the CPU hogging bug, please mention it here. Also please go to bug and record your experiences and vote for the bug.

Firefox developers have been refusing to investigate this bug for 2 1/2 years! So, I doubt it has been fixed in Firefox v. 1.5 RC3, which I am testing now.

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[jofi]

So in other words, Mozilla's support is really no better than Microsoft? It is open source so anyone can fix it, but apparently not in the 2 1/2 year window.

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[Anonymous Coward]

I have given up on FF as the default browser because of the "hogging" bug. My Mac will not goto or awake from sleep properly when FF is active about 1/4 of the time.

Also, my activity monitor, after awhile, will show 90 to 100% activity when nothing is going on. If I quit FF, it goes away.

So, Safari is the browser of choice for now. My Mac stays on (sleeping at night) for 3 to 4 weeks at a time.

The other thing about FF is that the "close window" X is to the far left which always seems odd. Safaris method of including the X in the tab seems much more reasonable.

You asked !!!

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[An Onerous Coward]

To say the Mozilla people "have been refusing to investigate this bug for 2 1/2 years now" is a gross mischaracterization. It was right for them to mark this bug as invalid because it's not a bug. What it is is a collection of symptoms running the gamut from crashes to extreme memory usage to cpu hogging.

The folks at mozilla are fixing these sorts of bugs all the time. But since the report is too vague to let the Mozilla coders know when the bug that caused the crash is actually fixed, it could never be marked fixed.

In short, it's "not being investigated" because it's vague, unreproducable, and simply duplicates a large number of more specific bugs.

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit!

This is not vague or unreproducable. I know countless numbers of people who have problems with memory and/or CPU hogging with Firefox.

Just because we are all not programmers who can sit here and run gdb to debug our everyday browsing does NOT make this an invalid bug. The fact that this is so extensively widespread but isn't getting fixed is a testament to a major problem with Mozilla's programmers.

If they are "being fixed all the time", then why have these issues NEVER disappeared across at least two major versions?

I'm sorry, your pathetic attempt to justify Moz not fixing what should be SHOWSTOPPER BUGS just doesn't work.

I'm using Opera now and I reccomended my friends and family to do so too. We don't get this kind of arrogant "fuck the user" attitude from Opera.

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[jofi]

I apologize... the truth hurts.

This is only good news if...

[Papatoast]

they fixed the damn Quicktime hijacking Flash bug.
Don't tell me about MIME types and deleting the pluginreg.dat file, this thing is just plain broke.

I'm gonna try the QT Alternative, remove the FF QT plugin and see how that does..

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Bullfish]

It is subjective to be sure, and it has to do with reading comments from people who think, not just react (often with idiocy). Along those lines my subjectivity excludes comments like yours from the "good" pile.

Mind, this often comes from AC category. Most of whom have good reason for not identifying themselves.

A little off topic but

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the middle of typing a posting and this thing popped up taking away focus. Didn't have full time to check, but hitting return would/could have started the update process off without informed consent.

Do you know how many times this has happened with AOL's AIM while I was typing in a password somewhere? Now there's a huge security risk.

Who cares that it was on Digg? If you care, leave.

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not bother me one bit that this was on Digg, what bothers me is that at the time this story was posted, Mozilla had already updated their website for you to download RC3 almost 24 hours before hand.

I checked last night around 10PM EST, right there on their front page. RC3 AVAILABLE.

Re:Are pop-ups fixed yet? (get Fasterfox)

[fak3r]

You want Fasterfox for this:

Block Popups:
A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

Fasterfox

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[tgd]

Notice my UID and yours, kid.

If it wasn't for people like me, Taco and company would be working 9-5 jobs writing mindless software for some generic company and the slashbots on here who think they are so smart would be somewhere else.

Some of us were here when the commentary here was by people who tended to know what they were talking about, and the discussions were on serious topics, not some latest pseudoscience or ignorant MS-bashing. And some of us who were feel its worth making an issue of the quality this place has sunk to, precisely because we have been on Slashdot since half the people here were in elementary school.

So get off your high horse

MOD PARENT UP to +5!!!

[Futurepower(R)]

The parent comment is NOT a troll!!

For more information, see this comment, which is the same bug: CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

Problem Cmd-Click Problem on OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed that in the release candidates the main page of Yahoo doesn't open a new tab when you cmd-click on links. Is there an easy way to file a bug report without creating a Bugzilla account?

Re:Are pop-ups fixed yet? (get Fasterfox)

[benjcurry]

Whoa...thanks! Fasterfox is great.

Way ahead of you!

[hkmwbz]

If they are wondering what Firefox will be implementing, they might as well look here ;-)

Easy way to fix the title tags:

[Tezkah]

There is an extension to fix that behavior:

Here. I agree that it's annoying that they haven't fixed it in the browser yet, but at least they offer an extension system so users can fix annoynces themselves. I also like Opera, but if they had a bug like this, would there be any workarounds available for you?

Re:Easy way to fix the title tags:

[potaz]

It's true there's workarounds, but they really should ship it out of the box. This bug has become something of a celebrated one for me: my online comic does use long title tags, and I get emails from confused Firefox users all the time. I point them to that patch on my site too.

However, I can't believe that Opera would let a user-interface bug like this linger for half a decade - they're very fast in responding to bugs and to user complaints. I read over the arguing back and forth about standards on the bug report and feel bad, because nothing is being done, and it seems nothing is ever going to be done.

Finally, the argument of "if you don't like it, fix it yourself" doesn't apply here: it's been fixed in several different ways by several different people, and these patches never get folded into the releases.

Re:Easy way to fix the title tags:

[potaz]

I just read over what I wrote and I do sound a little bitter. I'm actually not in real life! Honest!

HONEST.

Re:Easy way to fix the title tags:

[fbg111]

I also like Opera, but if they had a bug like this, would there be any workarounds available for you?

I think his point is that when they do find bugs like this, the Opera engineers fix it quickly. I use Opera as my default browser, and the amount of innovation and quality in their browser, especially compared to IE (with 10x the development resources), continually amazes me.

Re:Easy way to fix the title tags:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comic rocks, though :D

And why is that worth a news article?

[jopet]

I am using FF/TB but why is every tiny update or new version candidate worth a seperate news article? Why should anyone care when people do not even know what the difference to the previous tiny update or release candidate is? Why not save your breath/bits for the time when the actual release is there?

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Bullfish]

So we newer members and the editors/moderators owe you? Now who's on a horse?

My only point was that there is quality here, you just have to look for it and set your preferences. Back in the day, there were fewer people on the net and most of them were true geeks, so to speak. The world moved on and now the net is filled with yes, 12 year olds, housewives and other ordinary people. Some are trolls. I hit this site, television without pit, fark, digg and a few more sites. As popularity of the site increases, so do the number of people who just want to jerk around. It's life. More jerks hit the freeways too as more cars filled the roads. Slashdot is not immune.

You want to fix things. Make more intelligent post, do so often, and consistently. Any fool can just sit there and bitch. And frankly, as for your UID number, it just goes to show that there's no fool like an old fool.

Firefox 1.5 problems with Javascript

[bmalia]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but it seems that Firefox 1.5 is the only browser that struggles with this javascript. It works fine with 1.4 and with IE. I havn't tried Opera. I've submitted the problem to Mozilla but I never heard anything back. Maybe someone here is smart enough to figure out a quick fix to the javascript to make it work properly in all browsers.

The script in question can be found here. Enter in the first date like MMDDYY and it will convert it over to MM/DD/YYYY. Problem is, it drops off the last digit. Makes it MM/DD/YYY. Oops!

Re:Firefox 1.5 problems with Javascript

[binarysearch]

That script is broken, in more ways than one, but here's the code that you're seeing:

In the DateFormat() function, the line that says

              vDateName.value = vDateName.value.substr(0, (vDateValue.length-1));

is responsible for chopping off the last digit.

The substr function of the String takes an index and an length, not two indexes, so eval( "12345".substr(0, (5-1)) ) returns the (5-1) characters starting at index 0; that is, "1234".

Is SVG support any better than in RC2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was so excited to try new SVG built in RC2 and to my disappointment SVG rendering is inconsistent, many SVG pages I have found on the web break while display properly in Adobe IE plugin. Zoom and pan do not work at all. If there is any technology I was excited about, that would be SVG. I have been waiting for SVG to become mainstream or at least have decent viewer without a plugin, and to this day has not happend. Has situation any improved wit RC3? It's been just a week or so since RC2.

"Release Candidate"

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind a "release candidate" is that if no important bugs are found, it becomes the release version with no changes.

If "RC3" was actually in the dialog, they'd have to change the string before sending it out. This way, all they have to do is rename the package.

Very simple solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Under KDE's "Window Behaviour" pane, click on the "Advanced" tab. See the popup menu entitled "Focus stealing prevention level"? You can set that to any level from "Low" or "Normal" to "High" or "Extreme".

What? You mean you're not running KDE? Why not?

Way to sensationalize - let me vent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me start by saying you touched a nerve, I'm in a bad mood so I'll let loose and post AC. Don't take it personal. Rest assured I don't work for or on Mozilla, but I feel required to attack this stuck up it's not 100% perfect attitude I run into so often.

The bug is not Arbitrarily dropping information. You make sound like this is something important.

First it isn't arbitrary. It's consistent. It's truncating long titles on automatic popups over boxes that display the title of a link. It always drops the same text.

Second the HTML specs do not say exactly how things should be rendered. This bug is open because it is some people are saying "I think the spec should work like this" where the spec does not absolute.

Third there are work arounds using DHTML as well as extensions that will fix this bug, they are just not part of the standard builds.

The bug originally described several seperate problems as well and many of those problems have been fixed. I would rather see this bug be 10 years old and have Firefox pass the Acid 2 test then waste anyone elses time.

I did a quick search and there are over 10,000 open non-trivial bugs in the Mozilla BugZilla system. Just figuring out what is really a bug or what's a duplicate could take 5 years. If you won't use Firefox for FREE because they haven't fixed some tiny little bug that affects practically nothing then who cares. I'm sure if it wasn't this, you would pick some other tiny little "critical" bug and fail to give us the priviledge of being a user.

ahh... much better. Thanks! Balls in your court. Flame on. :)

Re:Way to sensationalize - let me vent...

[jesser]

Second the HTML specs do not say exactly how things should be rendered. This bug is open because it is some people are saying "I think the spec should work like this" where the spec does not absolute.

There isn't any serious disagreement over what the HTML spec says here. The reason it hasn't been fixed yet is that fixing it requires fixing bug 228673, which is in a fragile part of Mozilla's code (XUL layout) whose original authors have probably left the project. I see a patch and "[reflow-refactor]" in 228673, so it (and the tooltip problem it causes) will probably be fixed early in the Gecko 1.9 cycle for Firefox 3.0.

Re:Way to sensationalize - let me vent...

[potaz]

I meant "arbitrary" in the sense that there's no justification for it. And the reason I mentioned it in the first place is, as I said, that my online comic uses "long" title tags and I get emails from confused Firefox users all the time, asking if my site is broken. Four to five emails a week on this makes me wonder if maybe the bug isn't as tiny and little as you think!

I don't feel like I have a "it's not perfect so it sucks" attitude; I don't know, maybe I do. I just wish this one five-year-old bug would be fixed, because it's doing things that I don't want, and that a lot of my readers apparently don't want either.

And I should clarify that I didn't say "Mozilla sucks", I said that I like Mozilla, but they really need to fix bugs like this that have allowed to linger. It's easily visible to the end user, and little things like this where it just doesn't work as people expect make it appear like it's not ready for prime time.

OS X dialog focus

[Anm]

While OS X is not perfect, it largely prevents the problem when working in separate apps. Insteading of popping to the front, OS X dialogs only cause unfocused apps to bounce their app icons in the dock.

This does not prevent interruptions of task flow with the app (a network connection drops while typing in a chat application). It would be nice if such alert dialogs did not take input for at least third of a second after being displayed.

Anm

Re:A bit late :P

[Anonymous Coward]

"got updated" is never correct. What it is is really really bad english.

RC2 and Java and Adblock didn't work well...

[mcn]

I didn't read the release notes, or anything.

Has RC3 and Adblock fix it?

Re:RC2 and Java and Adblock didn't work well...

[Maian]

Dunno about Java, but try Adblock Plus instead of Adblock.

Crashing a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Firefox remember the webpages you were last looking at when you restart it after it, or another app, causes a crash or hang?

One of the features in Opera that I really like is that it remembers what pages were open, and at what point they were scrolled to, so that if Opera crashes, or it goes down with a Windows crash, it is very easy to recover.

Another feature Firefox should take?

Restricted Accounts

[mikefe]

How does the update work with a restricted account?

Does it only update when you login as admin?

Attempting to update and failing in a restricted account would not show firefox in the best light.

Re:Restricted Accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the fact that you can't run Windows Update or upgrade your drivers while using a restricted account reflect badly on Windows? Think about what a restricted account is for a minute.

Wtf

[Mr_Congeniality]

Dude what the fuck I submitted this first with those same words and it got rejected. Who the fuck is running the submissions?

My penis weeps for Opera.

[CyricZ]

My penis weeps for Opera. I just tried out Opera 8.50 for Linux. Mind you it is far faster than Firefox or Seamonkey (most likely because it is based directly upon the fantastic QT toolkit, rather than on numerous layers over the lacking GTK+). However, it still pales in comparison to Konqueror. Konqueror is fast. It blazes, while Opera chugs along.

Konqueror also feels light, while Opera does not. After all, Konqueror is just a web browser. It does one task, and it does that one task very well. A true UNIX application, one might say. Opera, on the other hand, tries too hard to do everything, much like Seamonkey. And that does not lead to a good user experience. Opera just feels heavy, memory-wise.

Opera was once a fantastic browser, but they caught the same bug that Netscape caught years ago. I like to call it the hyperintegration syndrome. They feel, for whatever odd reason, that it is best to pile as much in as they possibly can. And that leads to a program that just doesn't handle well.

My penis weeps for Opera, and the light, snappy browser it once was.

Re:My penis weeps for Opera.

[hkmwbz]

I don't know if you've used the same Konqueror that I have - the one that comes with KDE - but it's got a really ugly, clunky, slow, bloated user interface. It also doesn't "do one task". Konqueror is tightly integrated with KDE and does all kinds of stuff, which shows, since it's incredibly slow.

As for Opera not being "the light, snappy browser it once was" (how do you "feel" that something is heavy?), Opera has never been just a browser. It's done mail and newsgroups since at least version 2. And at version 9 it's still smaller and faster[1] than anything comparable (that is, other modern browsers), and with a better UI. Yes, Konqueror's bloated UI blows chunks. And it eats memory like there's no tomorrow, unlike Opera, which is very memory efficient.

So basically, you don't know what you are talking about. As usual.

And stop talking about your penis, spammer.

[1] Notice how the latest Konqueror is incredibly slow? Yep, it's getting even more bloated!

Re:My phone lives for Opera.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is 1Mb smaller tan FF and does not require loads of add-ons to do stuff use Opera users are used. Also, Opera runs on anything - I have Opera Mini (MIDP 2) on my cell phone and it rocks !