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Places Feature Cut From Firefox 2

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sing-thee-to-thy-rest dept.

segphault writes "Apparently, the new bookmark and history system (called 'Places') scheduled for inclusion in Firefox 2 has been removed from the roadmap and disabled in the builds. An article at Ars Technica discusses some of the implications: 'Since Firefox 2 (and all alpha builds from here on out) will use the conventional bookmark system, those of you that have been using Firefox 2 alphas (the Gecko 1.8 branch) will have to export your bookmarks to HTML in order to preserve them. As a Firefox user and a software developer, I am personally very disappointed with the removal of this innovative feature.'" Update: 05/01 01:16 GMT by Z : Ars link updated.

6 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Cut from Firefox2, but "removed from the roadmap"? by Glonk · · Score: 5, Informative

    This feature was cut from Firefox2 because it was unpolished and unacceptably buggy still. It is now on the "trunk" for inclusion in Firefox3, so it's still on the roadmap.

    In fact, it remains enabled on the Trunk nightlies for Firefox3.

  2. Corrected arstechnica link by Nate+Fox · · Score: 5, Informative

    The correct arstechnica link is here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html

  3. Places discussion by rayver · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case someone is looking for more information about the actual implementation of the "places" concept: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Places:Design_Overvie w http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:Design_Overview

  4. Re:fork a new branch by Myen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because forking it won't get code written any faster? It's not as if forking magically gets stuff done...

    Their official reason for disabling Places amounts to "either we kill this, or no new Firefox for everyone". They chose to release something with the other changes rather than wait.

  5. Re:So what are we missing? by WWWWolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Basically, in Netscape 4, bookmarks were stored in a quasi-HTML file, and history in a DB file.

    In Mozilla, bookmarks are stored in a XML-that-almost-look-like-HTML format, while the history is stored in the most insane file format ever devised by mortal mind. It's called MORK. Remember that name. Remember it well. (Seriously, take a look at your history.db. It's a text file. It really is. Or it might look like one from a good distance.)

    While in the new grand concept, everything is stored in a SQLite database - simple, well tested, portable, efficient, doesn't make Firefox much bigger than it already is, and above all, programmer-friendly file format that isn't causing peoples' brains to ooze out of their ears when they try to figure it out.

  6. Re:Firefox has the wrong focus by OzRoy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a blog post by Ben Goodger discussing the descision to remove places. Basically it's so they can focus on making Firefox "Safer, Faster, Better"

    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/010115 .html