Firefox for Intel Macs Planned for March

daria42 writes "Although there are unofficial builds already available, Mozilla will release an official version of Firefox for Intel Mac OS X in March, developer Josh Aas says. There are only a couple of minor bugs to work through, such as Flash and Java support."

Comments

Camino

[Goalie_Ca]

Camino is seriously a lot nicer gecko for mac than firefox. It actually integrates with OS X and it uses Cocoa. From a usability standpoint is much further ahead.

Re:Camino

[mrchaotica]

But it doesn't support extensions.

Re:Camino

[Jeff DeMaagd]

On a Mac, run AquaFirefoxSet and most of the aesthetic problems of Firefox on a Mac will go away.

A request from a user.

[OS24Ever]

Why make a Mozilla for x86 Macintosh and a Mozilla for PowerPC Macintosh? Make a universal binary, that's what they are there for aren't they? I mean relying on rosetta for a few things like flash and java can't be that big of deal, it's not like the bottleneck in a browser is the browser itself, it's more commonly the pipe feeding the browser. Isn't the point of Rosetta that Mozilla Firefox as it stands now runs just fine on a MacBook or iMac regardless of the proc under the covers?

Also most of the user community doesn't care that at 10.4.4 there is a version that runs on an Intel processor and a PowerPC Processor, so when we download trying to decide between Mozilla Firefox for Macintosh OS X (PowerPC) and Macintosh OS X (Intel) isnt' something we should have to decide. The ability to make univseral binaries is there, why not take advantage of it? Why create yet another file the world has to mirror and worry about which is the right one?

Just a thought.

Re:A request from a user.

[Nermal6693]

From the Mozilla wiki:

The Intel Mac work for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Camino is largely done. All fixes are checked in, and you can build for Intel Macs right out of CVS. We have 2 more tasks:

make a universal binary packaging system
set up an Intel Mac tinderbox

Re:Target date set - Mozilla will meet it

[mmkkbb]

Except for those who make a living programming free software, supported by a corporation or foundation which funds development.

Re:I hope we don't get over-trolled on this one

[SD_92104]

I can't imagine it's that hard to recompile a native x86 version of Firefox on MacOS X

That part might not be too hard. The problem is that you cannot mix environments (native/emulated) between an application and its plug-ins. Until all the plug-ins are also updated to be universal, running Firefox in non-Rosetta will most probably not be a pleasant experience.

The same problem apparently plagues Safari as well, due to some plugins not being fully up-to-date, running under Rosetta might be a better choice for a while...

All 4 Intel Macs are already in top 15 on amazon

[e1618978]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/t op-sellers/-/pc/all/pc/0/1/1/1/104-6461076-7991161

I felt lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does the very first result say?

There are fewer Camino "extensions" because Camino does not support XUL (used for most Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla extensions). However, it is possible to make some XUL extensions work with Camino by re-implementing the extension's UI...

I already feel marginalized enough running Firefox on a Mac, thanks.

Re:real news...

[oberondarksoul]

You've got a Slashdot username. You have a preferences page. You have a checkbox labelled "Apple" just begging to be unchecked. Seriously, if you don't want Apple stories, just turn 'em off and stop complaining. There's a reason why there's a lot of Apple stories at the moment anyway - it's Macworld, so you'd expect maybe just a little more focus on them?

Ad blocking suggestion

[Hal The Computer]

Try using Privoxy.

It is a *great* ad blocker. It works as a transparent proxy, so it will work with any browser. It is available for OS X, Windows (which I use) and various Linux distributions.

Re:oh yey

[ChunderDownunder]

I believe the problem as for x86 is again third party software such as flash and Java. Historically neither have had 64bit binaries from their vendor.

For Java, Sun has said, in the short term at least, they won't go to the trouble of releasing the necessary software for 64bit - Java Plugin and Java Web Start. IIRC, the method of installation for 64bit Solaris (SPARC) is to install the 32bit JRE (which has the plugin and web start) and then install the 64bit JRE over top.

This stifles usage of x86-64 with a 64bit OS if a 32bit compatibility module is needed. Too many hoops to jump through. AMD have had Athlon 64 for how many years now??? :( Methinks they'll only make the effort when 64bit Vista arrives.

Re:How about support for OS9?

[Ash-Fox]

If only MS would optimize windows's shutdown crap. Shutting down a domain controller takes AGES.

Re:How about support for OS9?

[Tumbleweed]

I have no clue if it's available or not, but I always recommend Opera for old/slow/low resource machines.

Re:When will devs learn ?

[Phroggy]

Flash and Java support are NOT minor bugs.

When a developer calls a bug minor, it doesn't necessarily mean the end user impact is minor, it often means the bug itself is minor, i.e. relatively simple to fix.

Re:Why so difficult?

[falkryn]

and as the parent of young 'uns, I've (or rather my oldest son (7)) been discovering how much there is out there in terms of kids flash based games. and not just the old yahoo! type space invaders games of yore, full blown stuff a while back you would have had to pay for. one of my oldest's favorite site lately appears to be this: http://club.lego.com/eng/games/ , there many more (pbs kids, kids wb, tvo kids, etc...) mind you, I have noticed that flash on safari here (osx on a g4 with a gig of ram) really can bring the system to a crawl (haven't used firefox on osx much, though extensively on other platforms)

Re:I hope we don't get over-trolled on this one

[bdaehlie]

Had Apple released their hardware closer to when they said they were going to, we would probably have been ready immediately. That was the plan :) That said, I'm happy to get off the Intel developer kit and onto production equipment and a solid OS release a few months early. -Josh Aas

Re:x86 Mac Users now Feel like amd64 Linux users

[bdaehlie]

Apple does provide Java plugins with their OS. However, the NSAPI (Netscape Plugin API) Java plugin that they bundle only does Java 1.3.1 and it has been fairly problematic for us. Maintaining it does not seem to be a priority for them - instead they are focusing on their newer Java plugin which uses a different Mac OS X-specific plugin API (which we don't support right now).

Luckily for us, Steven Michaud has created JEP, which we use for Java support in our Mac OS X products. See here for more details:
http://javaplugin.sourceforge.net/

-Josh Aas

Re:When will devs learn ?

[lachlan76]

You don't seem to understand how bugs are ranked. For example, this is how Gentoo does it (and I'm assuming it's standard BugZilla stuff):

1. Blocker: You find this bug and your system doesn't boot (Wipes your MBR, gcc, etc. etc.)
2. Major: The application is completely useless most if not all of the time. (Doesn't Compile)
3. Normal: Significant problems in the application, not affecting 100% of users though (Crashes on seeing MySpace's HTML for example...not that I can blame it ;). This may seem as bad, but it is a bug in the renderer, and as a result probably affects other sites too.)
4. Minor: Smaller problems, most users don't have the problem and it doesn't cause massive problems (I would put the plugin problems in here, simply because I don't know enough about the problem to put it into Enhancement)
5. Enhancement: Feature requests go here

On top of this, you can set a priority rating. Even if this is a minor/enhancement-severity bug entry, it can still be ranked as priority-1.

Re:Another nail? How many nails do you need?

[tverbeek]

Tell that to the students and instructors in the labs I support, many of whom keep clicking ye olde blue e instead of the shiny new compass right next to it in the Dock.