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Firefox 1.5 Final Now Available
yootje writes "Firefox 1.5 is out, you can download it right here: Linux; Mac; Windows. You can find more info about it in the release notes. Highlights are: Automated update, drag and drop reordering for browser tabs, improvements to popup blocking, better accessibility and better support for Mac OS X. Don't forget to make full use of the mirrors." It's semi-official.
Time to use some SVG on the web. I hope animation makes it into the next release ;-)
Or maybe I just haven't figured out how to get it to work properly (please correct me if I'm wrong).
When I click "Automatically do this for files of this type", stop showing me the prompt box for what to do with this file everytime the file comes up!
This happens a lot, especially with Torrent files. I tell firefox to launch Azureus whenever it sees a torrent. I tell it to always do this automatically for me. What does it do? It prompts me for every godamn torrent file as to whether is should save it or launch it into Azureus.
I torrent a lot of stuff, so this is really, really annoying.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Until i see it on the official Firefox Website http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ I ain't downloadin' squat.
That's not Mozilla's job at all. Their job is to produce the best web browser, it's up to all the distribution maintainers to provide packages for thier flavors.
F irefox. Do you really want them spending their time trying to figuring out the nuances of the top five distributions as well?
Mozilla already invests a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money in maintaining a three-platform build farm http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
No way I will download something from those Sweden pirates sites!
OMG! you will be visited by the MPAA soon! =oP
Anyway, just for the sake of completness, I was just looking at the "Roadmap" for Firefox 2.0,3.0.
It seems that the once "sleek, fast and stand alone browser" will continue to be bloated and bloated with features.
Why, o why dont the just freeze the 1.5 release and try to fix EVERY bug in the bugzilla database!
For example, I have installed the 1.5 version, and still the Find function does not work as expected on multiple frames (Java Api Documentation). There has been a bug filed on bugzilla for quite some time now (one year IIRC).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Fair enough, but at least it's built-in instead of having to download the extension.
I'm more psyched about the auto-patching. Hopefully, this will keep some parties quiet about their perceived lack of FF security.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
IIRC the rationale is that (a) there are many different RPM-based distributions with different requirements and (b) many of those distributions include Firefox anyway, so releasing an RPM for current versions of Fedora or SuSE is just a duplication of effort.
I've got first-hand experience with (a) building RPMs for the Dillo web browser, and let me tell you, it's a pain to keep a zillion different distros and/or mach roots and/or UML virtual machines so that you can build packages with the right set of libraries.
As for (b), there are still some differences, since each distro has its own policies on updates. Fedora Core has released new RPMs for Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc. though 1.0.7, while Mandriva sometimes updates to the latest point release and sometimes backports the patches. The latest mozilla-firefox RPM for Mandriva 2006 is version 1.0.6, but the browser itself is roughly equivalent to 1.0.7
All that said, Opera seems to have decided it's worth the effort, as you can download a couple of dozen possible RPMs -- though that may be in part because it's built into fewer distributions.
I hate beta-testing or QA'ing software and not getting paid for it.
Welcome to open source. Very few other people are getting paid for it either. The Mozilla Foundation does have some employees, but the vast majority of the work is done by volunteers.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I realize that every individual has their own set of priorities and concerns with their browser, but that's exactly what's great about extensions. Put the necessary stuff in and leave the optional stuff optional. Keep the footprint small and avoid both bloat and insecurity in the process.
I don't see a lot of things in the 3.0 roadmap that are questionable. Do you? They are things that will improve browsing in general and would be of most use to the most people with the least negative impact. This isn't like cramming ForecastFox into every installation by default or anything.
In fact, I don't think you've read through the entire list because in most cases, they are simply improving current functionalities and interfaces. The footprint is already there. The functions and features largely already exist. Improving on them is a GOOD THING because you're squeezing more return out of the existing investment.
The aim is for "Less than a 5.0 MB download on Windows".
The current Win32 download is 4.98MB
After all these modifications and improvements, where is this bloat you speak of? 4.98MB to 5.0MB is an increase of about 4/10ths of one percent.
Maybe because the file is only 5MB? Bittorrent is not very efficient for such small files. ^_^
Maybe because the file is only 5MB? Bittorrent is not very efficient for such small files.
It'd be nice for the source though. The tarball weighs in at 33 megabytes.
Acid 2 is invalid CSS. Personally, I don't care what my browser does with invalid CSS.
Not everyone has bittorrent installed
No, they don't, but if they released it for the first 24hours to BitTorrent only then the mirrors would have time to catch up and the worst of the download rush would be done.
That's because "Release Candidates" are just that: Release Candidates.
RC3 was a candidate to be the Final 1.5 version, not a beta.
Changes are expected within beta versions, but not within Release Candidates.
RC3 convinced... it was fine, no bugs needed to be fixed for it... so it was confirmed from a candidate to the actual final product.
- An uglier, less-functional prefrences screen which hides more options at a time /looks/ a lot like something being left uninitialized or simply an offbyone error. Seriously, what is wrong that you havent fixed this by now?
- New, non-standard "flat" look for the menus (presumably trying to emulate MS-office in windows XP)
- Extension interface broken once again, so no 1.5 support for some extensions
- new "Hey look, we're pretending to be IE!"-style error pages (less-intrusive than error popups, I'm mixed on this one.)
- Some of the more-important functions of tabbrowser extensions seem to be included, but I'm not going to bother to disable tbe to find out if it's "good enough"
- http://www.yzzerdd.com/, http://www.snopes.com/ no longer seem to succeed at opening popups (Yes I'm against ad blocking, No I'm not against blocking browser-hijacking.)
- Still seems to have whatever bug makes it sometimes simply "stop responding to all links", but now seems to recover from it after a long delay, rather than requiring browser restart.
- No obvious improvements to the bookmarks panel
- The incredibly stupid favorite-icon bug is still there. I dont know what idiocy causes this, but it certainly
So, verdict for the moment: Less fun to look at, more good.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My minor quibble:
Firefox's biggest feature to many is tabbed browsing...
So why is it ALT-ENTER opens a URL from the location bar to a new tab,
but it's CTRL-Click to open a link in a new tab? (ALT-Click saves the link as a file).
Keep it consistant people!
I'm always 2nd guessing: Do I press CTRL or ALT?
"I realize that every individual has their own set of priorities and concerns with their browser, but that's exactly what's great about extensions. Put the necessary stuff in and leave the optional stuff optional. Keep the footprint small and avoid both bloat and insecurity in the process."
This is exactly it. If I can be forgiven for using a cliche, "extensions are the new tabs". They're as much of a killer app as tabs were, IMO.
Not only do extensions make it possible to keep the base install simple and add features only a fraction of people want (eg mouse gestures, sessions) on an as-needed basis, they allow lawsuitbait features (eg BugMeNot integration) and features too narrow in scope to make it into an official release (eg enhancements for specific websites like Fark).
Naturally, some want a browser that works the way they want out of the box, and perhaps Firefox can't do that for everyone. I have no problem with that. I don't even have a problem with people using IE. What I like is that there's a powerful choice that works well for me, and the fact that IE's market share isn't high enough to let websites start requiring it again (it still happens but it was much more common a few years ago).
Also... now that the Mac version doesn't suck I can ditch Safari. It still has a slightly smaller memory footprint, but it's not significantly faster anymore and there are themes that help Firefox look native. With Firefox's feature lead, it's worth a small memory hit even on my older iBook, and with the ruthless efficiency of the AdBlock and Fliterset.G Updater extensions I even end up saving memory.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
The comparison to IE aside (naughty you!), yes, I would like to see a 64 bit version for Windows. Perhaps 64 bittiness would be a nice 2.0 feature?
IIRC the reason they do this is to maintain the value of their brand. So you can't get some dolt (or someone intentionally malicious) taking the firefox source, farking it up, and then marketing it as the real firefox.
After spending money advertising Firefox to gain brand recognition, why does the Firefox 1.5 final version still have "Deer Park" labelling all over it? Giving the development version a code name is fine, but users should not have visibility of this.
As an analogy, imagine demonstrating Linux to your CIO and the first thing he sees is "Now booting Zonked Quokka"...
Speaking of raspberries, I actually have an AIM screen name registered: pthbtttt. I'm glad someone agrees with me on the spelling of the raspberry sound :-)
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1