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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.
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.
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'
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.
- 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
"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.