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Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Alpha Peeking Out (Or Not)
anadgouda writes "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha is released. The links for download were not available directly on Mozilla.com website. Being Alpha, all features might not work and most of the plugins might not be compatible." Reading thru the comments, it appears there's some disparity as to whether or not this is actually just a naming scheme that they use; but let me reiterate that there has been no official announcement from Mozilla, so take with a giant grain of salt. Some good screenshots at OSdir.
Okay, seemingly little to no information about what comprises the new Firefox. For those who also might be curious, I have found these features described in a Firefox 2 Roadmap, but don't know if and how many of these made it to the new release.
Anyone else have any links to release notes?, what's new in FF 2?
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha NOT released.
The nightlies are now branded 2.0 alpha because... well, for some odd reason they like to brand their CVS builds before things get released, to make sure the act of rebranding breaks nothing. IIRC that actually hit them way back and they got scared.
Firefox 2.0 will be considered released when you see it on www.mozilla.org / www.mozilla.com / irc.mozilla.org
Quote from Asa Dotler's blog:
When we make a new release, we'll say so. Please don't report new releases because someone checks in a change to the user agent or similar. If we're actaully doing a release, we'll announce it. Thanks.
I was looking for the same thing as you, documentation about the features. You provided an interesting link, here's another one from the latest status meeting which includes the features, but a lot more :-)
Animoog.org
Opera 8.5: http://www.opera.com/download/
Opera 9 Technology Preview 2: http://labs.opera.com/
Weekly builds of Opera 9 TP2: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/
Changelog for Opera 9 TP2: http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/w90p2.html
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
this is probably because the themes/plugins themselves contain the version of firefox they should work for, and if the creator of the plugin does not set it higher than the current version, it will not work on the next. Usually they don't break, but because of this information, they won't even be started.
I have in mind a word that begins with "in" and ends with "on" --- it's not "inon"; it's "information"
I also have in mind a word that begins with "informat" and ends with "formation" --- it's not "informatformation", it's "information".
I hope that illustrates what "begins" and "ends" mean.
.. i can tell you that there is one thing that "breaks" most extensions: In the extension, you can specify a maximum version number under which the extension works. Normally, the extension developer sets it to a version he has personally tested (the actual release). Whit each version-bump, he retests and changes just the maximum version-number. If you want to do it yourself: get into the manifesto of the extension and search for this String "1.5" and replace 1.5 with a higher number.
Tab Mix Plus is an extension that has the "Undo Close Tab" feature, as well as many other useful ones. (The extension's page on the mozilla site is here.)
If you want only Undo Close Tab, that feature is also available in an extension called (what else?) undoclosetab.
There's a "portable" version available here:
http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=411
Definitely a plus b/c it let's you avoid dealing w/profile incompatibilites/conversion between the different versions of firefox and instead stores it in the directory with the portable firefox program
To be sure that they will work, you need to compile your extensions against the Mozilla source tree from which you compiled Firefox. That is not a limitation of any specific technology; rather, it is a limitation of mathematics. You have no more business expecting an extension compiled against 1.0.8 to work with anything except 1.0.8, than you have expecting that a CD will play on a cassette walkman.
Now, if the extensions won't compile against the new source tree, you may need to patch them. Perhaps a variable or function has changed its name. Or a function might require an extra parameter. Read the changelog and get hacking, if you can't wait for your favourite extensions developer to do so.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
So far the only distinctive feature of this is that it breaks extensions and will not load book marks.
As far as i can tell this gentleman went looking through the firefox ftp site and stumbled upon this. Its a Tinderbox build. meaning its increadably unstable and is just a starting point for further code development.
1. Mozilla puts the release out so users can report bugs. Unless you already have a Bugzilla account, I suggest you wait until a release candidate is out.
2. If Firefox 1.5.0.1 is crashing so often or leaking memory so badly for you that you need to restart Firefox every day or so, you might want to try 2.0 Alpha to see if it fixes your problems. Of course, if it doesn't you should report the problem (see #1).
End users generally should not be downloading alphas because of the downsides you mention.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You can also close a tab by right-clicking on it, and choosing "Close Tab." This works even if the tab that you want to close is not the one you're viewing.
All your sig are belong to us.
That would be the case... if Firefox extensions needed to be compiled. Which they don't.
Extensions are programmed in Javascript and XUL, and for some advanced ones, XBL. They don't need to be recompiled, because they don't need to be compiled in the first place. The fraction of a percent that have more demanding interaction with the host system don't even necessarily need to be recompiled, depending on how they hook in to the mozilla code.
You'd be right for other programs, but that's not how Mozilla works.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
Actually, the overwhelming majority of extensions are not even compiled. They're pure XUL/JS/CSS/RDF. The maxVersion arc mentioned in the sibling is the reason. It's used to guard against the browser internals changing under them - and yes, pretty much most of the things you can usefully change are considered browser internals. :( Then there's also the things randomly being ripped out (cf. the bookmarks and history going away and being replaced by "Places")
;)
And as long as you do no use frozen interfaces (including defining MOZ_STRICT_API, not defining MOZ_INTERNAL_API, and linking against XPCOM glue), it should work fine most of the time. It's just that, depending on what you want to do, that might not be possible
IE7 Beta 2 solves this by showing the close button in the tab, but only for the currently open tab - I'd say this is the second best solution after having the option on the preferences (which I haven't checked if IE has).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
In Firefox trunk, the close button appears on every tab when there're only a few tabs. It appears only on the active tab when there're lots of tabs.
Personally, I still prefer the behaviour in Firefox 1.5, where there's only one close button on the right. It's more efficient when I need to close multiple tabs. (aim, click, click, click vs. aim, click, aim, click, aim, click)
Oh, and for informational purpsoses:
Firefox = official public release
DeerPark = developer's copies, optimized and/or individualized bulids, and all those other builds that aren't the official issued-for-the-general-public builds. Which, it would stand to reason, would include all the alpha and beta builds.
Z
2: Losing stability/higher memory usage (come to think of it, this isn't really a change)
3: Bugs galore - possible security issues?
Repeat after me:
1 Compatibility issues are *normal* in alpha software. That's what they release it for: to find problems.
2 You *shall not* evaluate stability, performance nor memory usage in an Alpha stage software. Jeez, it has debugging code in it!
3 You *shall not* install Alpha or Beta software in a production environment, or on machines whose security might be at risk.
Karma whoring wikipedia entry about developement stages here.
It's called quality assurance. There needs to be someone in charge to avoid the scenario you describe: someone takes a buggy pre-alpha nightly, and distributes it as "Firefox 2.0".
That would obviously be devastating for the project. I'm glad Mozilla.org is in charge, albeit the only thing really preventing the previous scenario is community respect.
You're welcome to make a release, but you can't call it Firefox. Firefox is a protected trademark, as is Mozilla.
Besides, that's not what the article said.
The Burning Edge, one of Jesse Ruderman's pages, is a pretty good resource to get a summary of what is the latest and greatest in Firefox development.
He also has one that summurizes the differences between releases: http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/. It looks like he hasn't updated it for 2.0 yet though.