Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 Released

KrayzieKyd writes "God Bless Mozilla. Firefox has just notified me that Firefox version 1.5.0.4 has just been released with release notes and according to Mozilla's website, the same has been released for Thunderbird with its own release notes."

Comments

Freshmeat?

[mtenhagen]

Are we getting slashdot articles for each verion bump of the mozilla products? I tought freshmeat was created for that.

Is there something special about this release? According to the release notes these bugs where removed. Great but not enough for a slashdot article.

MFSA 2006-43 Privilege escalation using addSelectionListener
MFSA 2006-42 Web site XSS using BOM on UTF-8 pages
MFSA 2006-41 File stealing by changing input type (variant)
MFSA 2006-39 "View Image" local resource linking (Windows)
MFSA 2006-38 Buffer overflow in crypto.signText()
MFSA 2006-37 Remote compromise via content-defined setter on object prototypes
MFSA 2006-36 PLUGINSPAGE privileged JavaScript execution 2
MFSA 2006-35 Privilege escalation through XUL persist
MFSA 2006-34 XSS viewing javascript: frames or images from context menu
MFSA 2006-33 HTTP response smuggling
MFSA 2006-32 Fixes for crashes with potential memory corruption
MFSA 2006-31 EvalInSandbox escape (Proxy Autoconfig, Greasemonkey)

Re:Freshmeat?

[cperciva]

Are we getting slashdot articles for each verion bump of the mozilla products?

Well, we seem to get slashdot articles about every MSIE security flaw; by that standard a new release of FireFox which fixes 12 security flaws (5 of them rated "critical") is certainly slashdotworthy.

Re:Freshmeat?

[KiloByte]

The thing is, you don't ever hear about MSIE security issues unless there is already a popular exploit in the wild.

Re:Freshmeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the FAQ of the release notes does say:

What can I do to help?

We need all the exposure we can get ... Submit a story to Slashdot and other news sites about the release.

Someone was bound to follow the instructions.

Re:Freshmeat?

[Xamataca]

memory leak?... that's why I can't surf more than five of those neat sites with tinny porn video thumbs... ermm, shit.

Re:Freshmeat?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Submit a story to Slashdot and other news sites about the release. Someone was bound to follow the instructions."

Ah, so this is a Slashvertisment.

Re:Freshmeat?

[lpcustom]

You know this flamebait made me think, which almost caused me to have a stroke, so try not to let it happen again. I wanted to compare the two browsers to see just how much of a memory leak I get from FF.
I started with FF with my normal three tabs each with a different site open. I pulled up taskmanager and looked at all running processes. There was firefox at 31 meg.
So then I open IE6. Since I rarely use it I haven't changed the default home page from MSN. I check taskmanager, again. iexplore starts up using 45 meg. So I think maybe it's because of the website. I point IE6 at google. Sure enough the RAM usage goes down to 42 meg. To be fair however I thought I should open the three sites I have open in my FF tabs in IE.
iexplore.exe ---> 42,976k
iexplore.exe ---> 24,444k
iexplore.exe ---> 38,408k
Total iexplore.exe RAM usage 105,828k
Firefox with the same sites open in three tabs ---> 31,776k
If firefox is leaking on my machine it's into a big bucket called iexplore.exe

Re:Freshmeat?

[mrchaotica]

Leave it open for a few days. The reason that it's called a "leak" is that the free memory slowly decreases over time.

Seamonkey also updated

[darteaga]

Seamonkey, the new version of the old mozilla suite (Netscape-like) has also been updated. The release notes: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/releases /seamonkey1.0.2/.

Incremental Updates

[Nighttime]

I thought one of the benefits of Firefox 1.5 was incremental updates i.e. patches that that are in the 100s of KBs range. However, watching the progress meter for this latest update it will have eventually downloaded 6.1MB, which is basically the full version of Firefox.

Re:Incremental Updates

[fondacio]

In that case, you were updating a version lower than 1.5.0.3. If there is no incremental patch, the updater reverts to downloading and executing the full installer. I just updated 1.5.0.3, and the file it downloaded was quite small. Incidentally, Mozilla Thunderbird has also been updated to 1.5.0.4.

Re:Incremental Updates

[masklinn]

My FF 1.5.0.3 downloaded a mere 600k, and Thunderbird's update to 1.5.0.4 was roughtly the same size (~500k).

Your FF probably failed a hash check or something and downloaded everything to reinstall from scratch, that's the fallback when the updater doesn't manager to install incremental updates.

Re:Incremental Updates

[argStyopa]

Firefox 1.5.0.3 to 1.5.0.4 = 511kb on my Win98 box.

Re:Will it stop crashing?

[OffTheLip]

Not so much crashing but 1.5 seems slower. Especially noticeable with several (or many) tabs open. Systems I've noticed this on were not low end either. And OS did not matter, Windows XP, RHEL and Fedora all were sluggish. Seems like 1.0.7 offered a better all around browser experience.

Here we go...

[jginspace]

I'd like to hear about memory management issues, frequent crashes and how Opera was there first - in that order. I need a refresher; it must be while since v1.5.0.3.

Show the world and be taken seriously!

[MindPrison]

I think it's excellent with all these updates. Firefox if absolutely worth the attention.

Before Firefox - our local banking etc. where only accepted on Internet Explorer and nothing else, leaving out Mac and Linux users. Today Firefox is so respected that our country's Largest Bank support it!

Way to go FIREFOX!.

Menu Delay

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or are the menus like 4 times faster at least? Or is it this patch changes firefox so that my old registry tweak setting windows menu paint dealy from 400ms to 0ms now being recognized by FF? I'ts not a simple memory leak fix because I have 1.5 gigs and I never noticed FF slowing down after long term use.

Or am I just crazy and nothing changed at all? maybe it was the extention update to cute menus cyrstal SVG

Re:Will it stop crashing?

[root_42]

This is known and actually a feature, which can be turned off:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749 .html

disappointing

[distantbody]

And I *still* can't find text within a textbox...

Re:What does God have to do with this?

[Bromskloss]

What does God have to do with this?

Yeah, like he is be some omnipresent person having to do with everything in the universe or something.

Thunderbird now in mac universal binary

[anticypher]

Just tested with the newest macintel universal binary, and it is significantly faster than 1.5.0.2 (which also claimed universal binary, but they fucked up).

If you let software update happen on a mac intel, it doesn't update to 1.5.0.4 universal, but just updates the PPC image. You need to download the new universal image, and install that over the older version, and then it runs.

They still haven't addressed all the networking problems yet, but I really don't ever expect them to.

the AC

Re:SeaMonkey for Security

[bunratty]

Anyone wanting to stick with the Mozilla Suite should upgrade to SeaMonkey soon for security updates. SeaMonkey gets all the core security fixes Firefox and Thunderbird do, but the old Suite isn't being developed any more and therefore won't get any security fixes.

Re:Opensource is FUD

[Rogue Pat]

Looking at the source code, you can see which code got changed and which changes were made. The bug is not for your eyes, as it may give detailed steps to exploit the vulnerability.

Remember when Microsoft releases a patch it would say "a maliciously crafted web page may" etc. The bugzilla entry for Firefox may actually GIVE you all you need to build that maliciously crafted page.

As said before, there's no need to publicize detailed steps to exploit a browser.

Bon Echo

[Vexorian]

I am currently using Bon Echo Alpha 3 . I tried 1.5.0.4 and it seems much stabler and faster than 1.5.0.3 but it seems to me that Bon echo is still the best firefox version, It seriously is awesome.

Default update setting flawed

[LS]

Considering that privacy and security are big concerns for every large software project these days, I believe that Firefox's default update setting should be changed. If you go to Tools --> Options --> Advanced --> Update, and you haven't changed your default settings, you will find that it is set to "Automatically download and install the update". Even Microsoft wouldn't do this, so why is it acceptable in Firefox? It should default to "Ask me what I want to do.", and during the first update, a checkbox should be provided asking the user if he wants automatic updates from then on.

My 2 cents.

LS

Re:1.5.0.4 is major.significant.minor.forget-it

[Jerf]

Fixing "memory hogging" generally require significant architecture changes. This is not the sort of thing you get on a x.x.x.1 release.

I'm sure they're addressing this issue as it is easily now the #1 complaint about Mozilla. I recall it having memory issues even before plugins and the memory-hogging history-full-page-store feature (the one where you hit "back" and the page is just supposed to pop up, not re-render or re-request), but those two issues have magnified the issue into something that can't be ignored or poo-poo'ed anymore; I, too, will often see my Firefox hovering around the 600MB mark, and I recently installed that memory leak test tool and it didn't come up often at all.

Probably ought to shut off that feature; doesn't seem to do much for me anyhow.