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

Mozilla Sends Hidden Message to Hackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A file named "Please Spread Firefox.kext" has been located in the pre-release versions.

Why so difficult?

[orzetto]

There are only a couple of minor bugs to work through, such as Flash and Java support.

Is it so difficult to toggle them off already?

Re:Why so difficult?

[WilliamSChips]

Hard as it is to believe, some people actually *want* Flash! For example, I watch Homestar Runner cartoons, which need Flash. (Although I'm not on OSX86.)

Re:Why so difficult?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

\lim_{x\to8}\frac{1}{x-8}=\infty \qquad\Rightarrow\qquad \lim_{x\to5}\frac{1}{x-5}=\rotatebox{90}{\mbox{5} }

I don't know what's sadder, that you tried to make a visual pun by encoding it in TeX, or that I understood it.

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)

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

[Diordna]

Looks like the trolls have bitten even at the first post.

Aaaaanyways, what I was actually going to say was that it shouldn't really matter that much, speedwise, whether or not there is an OSX86-native binary of Firefox or not, what with all of the good speed tests I've read. Either way, that's a pretty darn good schedule for *any* piece of software - completely up to date with totally new hardware within 2 or so months.

Congrats to the Firefox team!

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

Target date set - Mozilla will meet it

[saskboy]

"We are targeting the official release of Firefox for Intel Mac OS X in late March with the Firefox 1.5.0.2 update," Mozilla software engineer Josh Aas told ZDNet Australia.

One thing I enjoy about Free Software organizations, but especially Mozilla, is that they give plenty of information about their release goals and we can trust them. After all, we can just download the nightly files and make our own, or check on the progress.

It would be interesting to see a comparision of target dates set by companies, and see how well the initial target date was met. Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Mozilla vs. Opera for instance.
--
Stop Sparky's brain from being probed by Bush

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

[pomo monster]

I agree--the guys who develop the GUI portion of FireFox don't have good taste, or at least not the same aesthetic sense as people who use and enjoy the Mac. Camino's very much better in this respect. But I'd like to learn why, as someone who runs Safari with the Saft and SafariStand plugins, would I want to switch to Camino? I tried it out a couple months back, but didn't appreciate how much slower than Safari it was (probably due to Gecko). But perhaps I overlooked some features. Can I ask you what's so compelling about Camino?

Re:Camino

[Lehk228]

camino follows the MAc GUI guidelines, firefox runs on many platforms and so it has to somewhat create it's own rules since it can never follow all at once without being inconsistant across platforms. one of the greatest things about firefox is that it is almost exactly the same on any platform.

Re:Camino

[pomo monster]

That right?

rosetta question

[gEvil (beta)]

Anyone know what sort of performance hit there is running the current Firefox release under Rosetta? I mean, do the Flash ads stutter or anything? I'm assuming it would be a better browsing experience than I currently get on my iBook (G3/600).

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

Why no official beta?

[Vellmont]

Why is the beta release this kind of "under the table" beta release from one of the developers? It seems like it'd be a better idea to make the build they have now more widely available in a more prominent spot, especially considering the scarcity of x86 Macs at the moment. Is the problem one of public perception of releasing (even a beta) of a product that's not feature complete? Will there be a more official beta before the march release?

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

not just speed, but compatibility

[tverbeek]

it shouldn't really matter that much, speedwise, whether or not there is an OSX86-native binary of Firefox or not

It's not just a question of speed. If I'm interpretting the what-Rosetta-won't-support statements from Apple correctly, translated PPC apps running embedded Java applets will not run on OSX86. The archetypal example of that is a web browser using a Java runtime environment. That makes an Intel-native version of Firefox necessary to maintain compatibility with a bunch of web-based apps and a fair amount of website candy. You can grouse about how horrid Java applets are, but it's a "failed" item on the capatibility checklist, which is Not A Good Thing for everyone's favorite cross-platform browser. (And it's another nail in the coffin of IE:Mac, which will never be distributed in Intel-native or universal binary format.)

Flash and Java support

[Stan Vassilev]

"There are only a couple of minor bugs to work through, such as Flash and Java support."

I knew it that Flash and Java support were bugs all along.

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.

Good thing the new Macs don't use 64bit CPUs

[gasp]

Two new Mac models are announced and Firefox with plugins is a priority. Meanwhile, AMD64/EM64T platform users can't run a native Firefox with plugins under any OS, with no ETA at all for that ability.

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.