Firefox 2.0 'Beta Candidate 1' Released

Krishna Dagli writes to mention that a Firefox 2.0 Beta Candidate has been released to the public. Ars Technica looks at some of the included features such as tab scrolling, anti-phishing measures, and an integrated spellchecker. From the article: "There is an option to search for updates for any extensions that have been broken, but it was not able to update any of the extensions I had installed. Fortunately, Firefox has been integrating many useful extensions (like the ability to drag and drop tabs to new locations) along its development, so this is not as big of a problem as it might seem. The browser seemed quite fast and stable, although I did not perform any benchmarking tests. I found one really obscure bug, where if the user clicks on a help link when a preferences dialog box is open, a new copy of Firefox will load without the user being able to switch back to the original either through Alt-Tab or the Windows task bar."

Comments

What features would you like in your browser?

[techmuse]

What features would you like in your next generation browser? Does Firefox 2.0 meet your needs? What would you like to see improved?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[heffrey]

A browser that started faster, responded faster, loaded pages faster, didn't consume vast amounts of my precious system memory, and using a platform native interface

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

More variety in the blink tag meme please.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[neonprimetime]

Does Firefox 2.0 meet your needs?

Pron on demand. I want everything, from the advertisements, the logo, the menu backgrounds, everything to have pron.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[dkh2]

NATIVE support for the current standard recommendation of SVG.

Plain and simple. That's the one thing I've been waiting on in a mainstream browser.

Yes, you can get it with betas and prc's but, mainstream, main trunk, production releases that include this are unknown to the public at large.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

In one word, Opera.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded. While we're at it, an extension JavaScript engine that ran multithreaded so that a single extension can't make the browser totally nonresponsive. Currently all extension JavaScript runs in the UI thread, so the browser just stops while an extension does anything complicated. For added stupidity, web page JavaScript doesn't appear to suffer from this problem.

I'd also like to see form widgets use GTK+'s theme instead of defaulting to the ugly blocky box. I think the same problem exists under OS X and any version of Windows not using Luna. Windows XP gets themed form widgets, why doesn't any other OS?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Reverend528]

didn't consume vast amounts of my precious system memory

I could live with a browser that consumes vast amounts of memory if it would bother to periodically return that memory to the system. I'm likely to be modded down for saying this, but the real (and perhaps only) problem with firefox the memory leak which has pretty much always plagued it.

And before you respond by saying "read article X and change Y in about:config", I suggest you try a simple experiment: Open up a firefox window and start Gmail, leave the window open for several days and monitor how much memory is used each day. The memory will increase over time. Apply the "memory fixes" and run the same experiment. While these hacks can reduce the amount of memory used, they can't fix the memory leak.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[arakon]

I want it to pass the Acid Test.
Then I would like compliance with all W3C web standards. All of them, starting with XHTML and CSS1 / 2. You can start tacking the others on when you nail that big one.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[nick.ian.k]

Tear-off tabs, i.e. the ability to select a given tab, drag it outside of the browser window, and drop it anywhere not in a given window and have it open in a new window. Under a WM/DM supporting multiple desktops, this would be highly useful for grabbing a tutorial you're previewing, having it tear-off, and then tossing it onto another desktop for later use in conjunction with a terminal or given application window, and would prevent the user from having to bookmark quite so much material.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Darundal]

Heidi Klum Almost More Heidi Klum

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see PING removed so that we dont have all our clicks tracked by an unlimited amount of 3rd party servers

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

Yes, there are hundreds of leaks in Firefox. Gmail triggers several of them. The good news is that all but one of them is fixed on the trunk, so Firefox 3 should leak much less on Gmail. The other good news is that you generally need to run Firefox for several days before the leaks become noticeable, if you monitor the memory use number closely.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

There are already builds of Firefox available that pass Acid2.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how in the Firefox URL output
the memory "Storage in use: xxxx KiB" eventually
climbs above "Maximum storage size: yyyy KiB".

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[baadger]

If what you're saying is true this is most likely because extensions by their nature need to be able to manipulate UI data structures such as UI javascript and XUL. I suspect making that process entirely thread safe is anything but trivial or could be even accomplished without co-operation from extension writers, making the API far more complex.

Now i've never looked at the Firefox code but I have done multithreaded programming and I suspect that might just stifle the great selection of extensions users currently enjoy a bit.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[spyrochaete]

I blog with www.blogspot.com and their spellchecker is just atrocious. It works fine about 20% of the time, though its word catalogue is horrendously underpopulated, but sometimes it will inexplicably mangle the text in areas it didn't even prompt me about!

I'm using the new Word 2007 beta which supposedly has Blogger support, but I can't get it to work at all.

Long story short, the spellchecker is worth its weight in gold! This feature alone will considerably improve everyone's usage and enjoyment of the world's fancy shmancy Web 2.0 apps!

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Bogtha]

I suggest you try a simple experiment: Open up a firefox window and start Gmail, leave the window open for several days and monitor how much memory is used each day.

That's not a good test because the JavaScript is constantly running and the page is never reloaded. That means it could easily be a leak in Google's JavaScript causing the results you see - it's not as if a browser can magically decide that a script doesn't need an object any more if it's still hanging onto it.

That's not to say I don't think that Firefox has memory problems, but if you're going to do something like that, at least reload the page periodically.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[A beautiful mind]

1. Security. I feel that lately Firefox has slipped on their security record. I want them to audit more, design it better to be secure.
2. No memory leaks. Yes, it still does leak memory.
3. NO BLOAT. NO BLOAT. NO BLOAT. The integrated spellchecker and various shit is something I don't want. If someone wants it, they can just install the extension to provide that functionality. That is the whole point of the extension system. I don't want beginner-user-oriented feel-good features, tyvm.
4. Better standards support. ACID2, etc.

Basically, that's my wish list. I am afraid they are slowly creating another Mozilla suite though. This is my take from an engineering viewpoint.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Anti-Karma-Whoring measures.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[westlake]

The other good news is that you generally need to run Firefox for several days before the leaks become noticeable, if you monitor the memory use number closely.

Tell me why a non-technical end user should have to monitor memeory use at all.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not as if a browser can magically decide that a script doesn't need an object any more if it's still hanging onto it.

Yes, after all, garbage collection has not yet been invented. OR HAS IT, FUCKTARD?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

That's exactly my point. End users should not monitor memory usage, and therefore should not see the effects of memory leaks. They're only noticeable if you watch closely over days.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[romcabrera]

Yes, but Opera and (gasp!) IE don't have that problem. You can say whatever you want about design flaws... but final users don't see that, they just notice functionality, and machines slowed down. I am a fan and user of Firefox since it was called Firebird! I evangelized many people in the early days... But sadly know I acknowledge to have recently downloaded Opera, now it is free :(

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please enlighten me as to how you can garbage collect an object when you can't tell if it's still in use?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[ThePhilips]

There was requirement about "native interface". Only when Opera will learn that double-click used to select text (not to open pop-up menus). When drag'n'drop will finally start working (try to drag URL from location bar to create link, try to drop link to open in new window/tab). When UI will be drawn using host OS (menus are always too thin - provided the amount crap in the menus - they are barely readable, controls don't use system font, etc etc etc) When tabs will be closing in the order they are on screen - not some random order. When tabs would be simply switching by Ctrl-Tab. And finally when about box will be what it is meant to be - dialog box.

Until then, tradition of Opera to break UI rules with every new release, does no good. Opera can called anything - but "native application." Unstandard keyboard shortcuts (easy to mistype), unstandard behavious (always confusing with other applications), etc. "Native application" doesn't mean "picture looks like everything else". Opera's "nativity" - is skin deep only. For definition of what native application I can only direct you (and hopefully Opera's devels) to sources: MS Guidelines for UI development & Apple's HIG & GNOME HIG. Read that before reinventing square wheels. Send that to Opera - probably they do not know about the guidelines.

Mozilla people spend lot of time making sure that people used to various OSs and various UI standards will feel themself comfortable. Specifically goal of Firefox was good integration with host OS - Windows or Linux - even Mac OS X support now improved greately. Br... Somebody stop me. I'm flaming.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[spyrochaete]

I wasn't a fan of the Mozilla browser suite, but one thing I really liked was the quick launch "agent" in the icon tray. I don't want another icon in my tray, but I would love to see Firefox preload and stay resident in memory to speed up launches. The program launches slowly sometimes and I use the browser all the time.

Then again, the browser is taking up 40MB of RAM right now which is no small chunk of change. It's no biggie for me (1.5GB RAM) but it may be unacceptable for people on lesser machines or thin clients.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[mrchaotica]

I'd also like to see form widgets use GTK+'s theme instead of defaulting to the ugly blocky box. I think the same problem exists under OS X and any version of Windows not using Luna.

Mac OS X has third-party pretty form widgets; you should be able to find them via Google.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[mrchaotica]

I am a fan and user of Firefox since it was called Firebird!

Bah, that's nothing -- I was using it when it was still Phoenix!

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to leak memory in garbage collected languages. As an example, see Firefox...

(The simplest way is to simply never unset references to objects. Even if a reference will never be used again, the GC can't remove it because it can't know. Other ways involve adding event handlers and then never removing them. So there may be 20 event handlers on an event, all of them now useless, but they can't be GCed because the object sending events still has a handle to all of them. In Firefox's case, there are a number of ways to make it so that JavaScript objects become "root" objects in the mark-and-sweep GC, so they'll never be collected even though they're never referenced by any other "root".)

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm likely to be modded down for saying this

I'll try to remember to mod you down the next time I have the points ;^)

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Atzanteol]

Gee, thanks...

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[g2devi]

> Please enlighten me as to how you can garbage collect an object when you can't tell if it's still in use?

Actually, you *can* to some extent. Check out the Boehm Garbage Collector:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gcdes cr.html

The basic idea is that it looks at the registers, the stack(s), and the static data region(s), and heap for any sequence of bytes that *looks* like a pointer and assumes that it is. Once it's done the memory scan, it reclaims all memory that hasn't been pointed to by these alleged pointers. I know it sounds crazy and it's easy to think of various scenarios that will cause memory to never be reclaimed, but it works surprisingly well and is extremely portable.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

Garbage collectors can collect only objects that cannot be reached, and therefore cannot be used. If a pointer or reference in the code hangs onto an object so that it might be used later, a garbage collector cannot collect it. Many Firefox extensions have problems like this — they keep a reference to many pages so they cannot be collected, even with the most sophisticated garbage collector. A web page can also leak memory by continually allocating objects and holding onto references to them.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are both noobs. I've been using Firefox since it was still called Navigator 2.0b1.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Chas]

I'd like to see FF2 actually pass the ACID2 test. Right now there are things, admittedly crazy things, that are within the purview of the standards (deeply nested tables and DIVs for instance) that simply DO NOT render on Firefox (or IE for that matter).
I'd also like to see a general cleanup of the code where all standard behaviors aren't a result of gazillions of exceptions.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[TheRaven64]

A spell checker definitely lives in the extensions mechanism. On OS X, for example, you should use the text services API to call the built-in spell checker. As long as the extension API provides the ability to:

1. Read text from a text area,
2. Underline text in a text area in read, and
3. Create a context menu associated with each word in the text area

Then it would be possible to write an extension that provided spell checking and integrated with the rest of the system. On systems that don't have a built-in spell checker, you could provide an aspell (or whatever) back end.

I have no desire for my browser to be duplicating features of my OS in the name of portability.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[nrlightfoot]

I would like it to run, i'm using 1.08 because 1.5 always crashed when I started it.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bicho]

Are you serious?
I'd like Linux Firefox to work properly with svg and gtk (it crashes when it opens a file/save dialog while gtk is using some svg icons/themes
Also I'd like Firefox (mozilla in general) not to override gtk's pup-up/contextual menues. It's the only thing that gets in the way when I want to use a gtk imput method.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, theres not much point in being able to go back to the last few pages super quickly if they've been open for hours, they need some kind of timeouts on that stuff.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

The inline spell checker needs to work in all text fields, not just textareas. Imagine I'm a user filling out a form with 10 text input boxes, and one textarea...having the manually click on each textbox and select "Spell check this field" is uncalled for. Just spell check them all.. or at least add a "Spell Check tThis Form"...

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[WilliamSChips]

Add extensions. Opera seems to think that everyone will like their particular flavor and never anything more.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

What features would you like in your next generation browser? Does Firefox 2.0 meet your needs?

How does it make you feel?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[WilliamSChips]

And Firefox hasn't had that problem either since the release of 1.5.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I'm at work and can't try the Firefox Beta Candidate (which is actually up to release 3 now), but does Firefox 2.0 on OS X use OS X's built-in systemwide spellchecker or do I have to use Firefox's? As I type this post, Safari is spellchecking everything for me, and I'd like to continue using the OS X spellchecker in Firefox.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[hullabalucination]

Actually, Javascript can cause memory leaks in IE as well:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/IETechCol/dnwebgen/ie_leak_patterns .asp

I haven't tested it lately because I tend to stay away from IE, but a couple of years ago it was quite easy to slow a user's system down while viewing a page in IE by using Javascript to scroll text across the browser's status bar. Many Websites that had tools and toys for Web developers would warn of the danger of using Javascript for scrolling text effects. The effects would be noticeable in minutes rather than days.

* * * * * *

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
--Groucho Marx

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[LoverOfJoy]

And to top it all off, things like leaks in gmail are exactly the kinds of things that can become issues to nontechnical people. My mom mostly uses her computer for email. She often ends up leaving it on gmail for ages. After complaining to me about how slow her computer gets I finally got around to installing opera.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bit01]

• More reliable. It's pretty good already but I use it regularly and I would like it to be even better.
• More testing for race conditions. Firefox is most unreliable when actions occur quickly or simultaneously such as multiple tabs being repainted and/or menu items being activated and/or windows being resized.
• A working bug/crash reporting mechanism. And a guarantee not to publish the reporting email address on a web site indexable by a spammer.
• Better behaviour in the presence of external failures of any sort. Not enough testing has been done for this.
• Not have the user interface lock up when the DNS server is delayed/unavailable. Currently it can lock up for seconds at a time.
• Not have the user interface lock up when a website is delayed/unavailable. Lockups can occur when website elements are delayed.
• Not have the user interface lock up when a plugin is initializing/downloading content.
• Not have the user interface lock up and fail to highlight correctly when keyboard autorepeat is being used to highlight a block of text in a form.
• Faster startup and user interface would be nice. Test it on a slower machine.
• Clearer handling of extension installation both for a single user and machine wide. Currently it's not clear how to install extensions machine wide or to avoid repeated downloads for repeated installations.

Mostly, I'd just like existing behaviour to be more robust. The only new functionality I'd like to see is much more sophisticated bookmark handling and the ability to export/export a full set of configuration settings, including extensions and bookmarks, between different firefox installations, including up-version. Kudos to the team.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

I don't think the point of the CVS cop-out is that you shouldn't discuss features available in non-final builds. The point is that you shouldn't dismiss problems in final builds because they're fixed in non-final builds.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, Noob, I've been using it since it was called Mosaic!

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Espectr0]

*Better printing support. Whenever i want to print something, fonts, tables, everything look bigger
than they look in IE or opera, and the page is html and css complaint

*Memory reduction. I disabled the cache and it still sucks over 200MB after my typical browsing

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like version 1.0.x back, really; 1.5 broke text selection, copy and paste, and various focus-related behaviors. I had to entirely disable the feature where typing triggers a search if you're not in a text box, because it was getting triggered even when a text carat was clearly blinking.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[buswolley]

really my firfox 2.0 beta is at 123,632 K .. and I'm only have one tab open.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[buswolley]

Damn.... How come Firefox doesn't have a grammar checker?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[SkOink]

I would like to see the Firefox dev team collaborate with Adobe to fix their PDF viewer. I have worked in both the academic and corporate world, and one thing which is common between both is that everybody makes heavy use of PDF. Waiting two solid minutes for Firefox to try to render a PDF (which might or might not actually render at all) is completely unacceptable, and it's the primary "deal-breaker" behind why my office uses IE. The only two things I would change about Firefox are: 1) reduce the memory footprint and CPU overhead, and 2) fix PDFs. Both of these should be the real priority, not adding more features to an already full-featured browser.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Dev59]

Firefox won't use the native cocoa widgets of OSX for spellchecking until version 3 (as it's currently roadmapped). Firefox 2 will use it's own spellchecker, regardless of OS.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[buswolley]

Mosaic's mom was hot! We made lot's of children.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

That sounds like normal memory use. The memory leak becomes apparent when you can't get memory usage to go below 200 MB. Besides, are you actually having any problems with memory usage, or just complaining about a number? You really shouldn't be watching the numbers at all...

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn off the really annoying "WHOOOP" sound that plays when you try to find something in the page that isn't there and you've got your volume turned all the way up and it blows out your eardrums. It should be MUCH easier to disable.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

That's not good enough. Firefox has been running on OS X for years, and it doesn't look like a Mac app. By this time, the controls were supposed to look like Mac controls.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Asztal_]

How is that different from the redirection that already takes place now? I think it's better -- you don't have to wait for the server to serve up a redirect, and you can probably remove pings with user scripts.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[mrchaotica]

Yes, I agree. Not only does it need to look like a Mac app, but they need to make it support Services (instead of providing its own spell checker, especially) and Applescript too.

Either that, or Camino needs to be made more like Firefox (supporting extensions, etc.)

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Asztal_]

It's not going to happen in Firefox 2, but maybe Firefox 3. A development branch (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:Reflow_Refactoring) already passes the Acid2 test (http://flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/), but needs more work.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[seek31337]

Yes, cool! Bitch about free. While you're at it, tell the developers they're stupid when they ask how they can better serve everyone. And make demands about what you were supposed to have, you know, for all your hard-earned debt from the Mozilla organization.

Nice link! Too bad it doesn't contain anything about OSX, MAC, or CONTROLS. But adding a link that 99% of the /. readers will take at blind faith to say exactly what the link text says goes a long way to make you look like you know what you're talking about.

Yeah, I am flaming, but you all need to start allotting a little more oxygen to the brain.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Sunny7L]

There is a PDF extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/636/

I really love Firefox, and I'd definitely appreciate a spell checker, but I'm going to check out Opera tonight because I hate waiting nearly 30 seconds for it to open. (IE7 is even worse with closing tabs--takes like 5-10 seconds. . . well, maybe 2/3 but it feels like a minute.) There should be an option to start with Windows, or something.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

If she uses gmail, why the heck have you not set up gmail as pop3 for her?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only when Opera will learn that double-click used to select text (not to open pop-up menus).

This is an option. Did you look in the preferences (ctrl+p)?

When drag'n'drop will finally start working (try to drag URL from location bar to create link, try to drop link to open in new window/tab).

I can't follow here. Is all sorts of drag&drop broken for you or just one situation? Describe more exactly what to drag from where to where. Say what you expect the browser to do and the actual result.

When UI will be drawn using host OS (menus are always too thin - provided the amount crap in the menus - they are barely readable, controls don't use system font

Opera AS will not give up its cross-platform toolkit.

Among all Opera users I heard from you are the first to complain about the browser not using the system font. (FWIW I use Opera on Windows 98, 2000 and SuSE10/KDE.) However, you can change the font. Did you look in the preferences (ctrl+p)?

Menus too thin? Not sure what you mean. A screenshot would help.

etc etc etc

Be specific.

When tabs will be closing in the order they are on screen - not some random order.

This is an option. Did you look in the preferences (ctrl+p)?

You aren't right, the order is not random, but always deterministic.

When tabs would be simply switching by Ctrl-Tab.

You can use 1 and 2 to cycle forward and backward through tabs. However, the key shortcuts are configurable. Did you look in the preferences (ctrl+p)?

And finally when about box will be what it is meant to be - dialog box.

No one says Help -> About must produce a dialog box. A built-in web page does the job quite well to display authors, copyright notices, setup information and thanks.

Opera can called anything - but "native application."

With the default skin switched off, it looks&feels close enough to a native that the rest of difference does not matter. This isn't goddamn Winamp.

Unstandard keyboard shortcuts (easy to mistype)

The most recent release changed a handful of often used shortcuts for greater compat with other browsers. Shortcuts are configurable.

unstandard behavious (always confusing with other applications), etc.

Be specific.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[drinkypoo]

How is userjs different from extensions, aside from the fact that Opera lacks the XUL?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[jsebrech]

Javascript has a concept known as closures (basically function objects), which when created inherit the scope they were created in, in the form of the scope chain. This scope chain can keep pointing to variables long after a naive reading of the code would seem to conclude nothing is pointing to them (by all references to them having explicitly be set to null). This in turn causes memory leaks. This is not a bug, but is behavior that is mandated by the ECMAScript standards, which firefox tries to aspire to.

I've run into this problem myself in an actionscript (flash) application, where I initially blamed flash for my memory bloat, until I learned that it was my own weak understanding of closures that was the cause.

Since firefox extensions are written in javascript, I expect that a lot of them have memory leaks in the form of ill-designed closures, which would cause the firefox process to bloat, even though the firefox developers are not at fault.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[kimvette]

I'd like to see:
  - Ability to enter metadata (description, keywords) when creating a bookmark
  - A bookmark search facility (wait, wasn't this on the 2.0 roadmap before?)
  - an extension garbage collection utility (when an extension monopolizes CPU time or memory, it should be killed and reloaded automagically)
  - the search box to be resizable without having to install the "resize search box" extension
  - All tab mix plus features to become standard in the browser
  - Documentation of ALL command line options to be included in a readme file (or in the online help)
  - Profile management should be accessible from the Tools menu or through edit->preferences
  - Deployment to be better documented (to make it easier to deploy standard profiles for all users, be it on Windows, Linux, OS X, etc., in the All Users profile, or in /etc/skel, or whatever other mechanism the OS supports) without having to jump through hoops

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Lucas.Langa]

"This build, codenamed FiReflowfox, comes from the development branch of Firefox called REFLOW_20060603_BRANCH, and has an entirely rewritten page layout engine, that has some serious bugs, including the inability to display list and combo boxes. However, it does pass Acid2 version 1.1, and also renders most pages correctly (although it has problems with the tag "sandwich" ...)." Yeah, almost makes sense. Dumbass.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Matt Perry]

Yes, after all, garbage collection has not yet been invented. OR HAS IT, FUCKTARD?

Garbage collection only works when there are no more references to an object. If the programmer made a msitake and isn't releasing all references then the garbage collector won't release all of the memory hald by those object.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Skjellifetti]

I want to be able to turn on/off javascript on a per URL basis.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[jazman_777]

Because then it would crash when you go to /.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Clover_Kicker]

> A browser that started faster, responded faster, loaded pages faster, didn't
> consume vast amounts of my precious system memory, and using a platform
> native interface

Lynx?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Sir_Lewk]

I would like a way to remove the close icons on each of the tabs. I'm tired of accidently clicking on them, and I couldn't even find an option in about:config.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[buswolley]

No complaints really. I have two Gigs of Ram on my box. Also, I mistakenly reported the problem. The current use of Firefox was quite small. However, a previous instance which had crashed was staying on in memory.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Gnavpot]

Haha, Noob, I've been using it since it was called Mosaic!

I have used IE since it was called Mosaic.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Atzanteol]

Fine. Acid2 compliance won't be in the released Firefox 2.0 either.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[sharkey]

Pornzilla?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[bunratty]

That's correct, because the reflow branch will be merged onto the trunk, rather then the 1.8.1 branch. You can expect Firefox 3 to pass Acid2. My point is merely that the code for Firefox passing Acid2 is written and available if you want it. It's not vaporware, in other words.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Kelson]

Tell me why a non-technical end user should have to monitor memeory use at all.

They shouldn't. For the end user, the issue isn't whether Firefox leaks memory, but whether Firefox leaks enough memory to impact performance.

That depends greatly on your usage patterns (how long you leave it running, how many tabs you typically have open at a time, how many other apps and services you run, etc.), which extensions you use, how much RAM your computer has, etc. If your scenario is such that the leaked memory doesn't get bad enough to impact performance, it doesn't matter whether Task Manager shows Firefox using an insane amount of memory.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that the memory leaks don't matter in the abstract. I do think Mozilla should continue tracking them down and fixing them. But if you can only see the problem in Task Manager, and not in actual performance, then it's not a critical issue in that particular scenario.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Qetu]

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Emetophobe]

A browser that started faster, responded faster, loaded pages faster, didn't consume vast amounts of my precious system memory, and using a platform native interface

Sounds like you want to use lynx.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Emetophobe]

I suggest you try a simple experiment: Open up a firefox window and start Gmail, leave the window open for several days and monitor how much memory is used each day.

Ok, thats a nice experiment and all, but in the real world, who actually leaves their browser window open for "several days" straight? I'd imagine there are TONS of programs out there that if you left it running for "several days", you would also notice memory leaks. I shut down my Windows XP box when I'm not using it, so maybe that's why firefox doesn't cause any problems for me...

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[brouski]

Safari and IE are free too.

Why should someone switch to Firefox if they're unhappy with the look and feel?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

The memory leak issue in Firefox pisses me off so much that I've considered moving over to Opera or even back to IE (ugh). I've read a number of topics about how to fix this issue, but they never do anything. I shouldn't HAVE to monitor my god damn memory when doing something as arbitrary as surfing the web...what a bunch of garbage. What kind of counterproductivity is that?

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[seek31337]

There's a difference between 'free' and 'at no additional charge'.

And if you're unhappy with the product, you shouldn't use it. I never said you should. If you ahve criticisims, you should state them in a polite manner. The point is, it's free and you can't expect something of someone who hasn't promised you anything, and hasn't taken any of your money.

Don't like Firefox? Great. Don't want to use it? Fine. Demanding that they provide features you want? Moronic.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you have to tweak this and that just to get the Opera to work like other Windows applications? What happened to good defaults, and where is the master out-of-the-box button?

I'll give you 3 examples (out of many more to list) where drag and drop fails in Opera:
- Go to a page with a text field/area, and drag any text in the web page to that textarea
- Select the first half of a text url (url without the anchor tag) and drop it to the location bar
- Drag and drop a plain image to desktop/an explorer window, and give me the copy of the image but not the damn link!

There may be an Opera way, but it's not the native way.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

One day programmers will invent resource measures, quotas, and limits. Enforced by automation even.

I mean, reinvent and reimplement. Again.

[The behavior you describe is a big problem. One would hope that monitoring tools would be built in and readily available to educate authors, give users a way of diagnosing and reporting problems, and head off larger dissatisfaction.)

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Procyon101]

I leave my box up 24/7. I often need to access my boxen from other boxen, which is why they stay up, so I TS in (on windows) or SSH or VNC in on Linux. Many times I will leave a browser open for days or weeks, mostly because I'm not thinking about it. If these were game consoles or other commodities, then I would see your point, but they are computers, and the reason I own them is because I need them to compute, 24/7. So, yes, this is a real world problem.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right. I have at least 10 hours at my hand just to reconfigure/remap shortcuts, preferences, keymaps to make sure Opera behaves more or less like other native applications!

I was an Opera user, and for the reasons mentioned above (and, the big f*cking ad at the top, at that time) I switched to FF, and am more than happy with it.

Next!

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I shat in my pants first time I heard it while my laptop was plugged in to the 6.1 750W system and I was blasting off Led Zeppelin.

I have developed phobia of that sound, and now I can only browse when I mute the system sound.

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[pile0nades]

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/1.0.8/

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[Serpent Mage]

Newsflash. Using firefox 1.5 with no extentions at all and doing just what you say, after 3 months with no restart, it still uses the same 24 megs of memory it always has. No configuration tweaks. No anything. Plain old firefox.

The only memory leaks I have ever found with firefox involve plugins. Either firefox extentions or with its ability to use things like flash.

If you have problems with the memory leaks, I suggest you stop installing the extentions. Unless it is because of flash sites in which case I suggest you prod firefox to improve their flash support (there entire memory model is screwy for plugins in general). But firefox by itself doing only the test you suggest has 0 memory leak. I have 3 months of data to prove it as well ^_^

Re:What features would you like in your browser?

[fbartho]

Tools->Options -> Tabbed Browsing -> Display -> uncheck the "show close button on every tab" checkbox. Requires that you run the tab mix plus extension or other tab extension, however the changes may be persistent, so you can probably apply them and then disable the plugin.

Sorry I can't tell you the about:config key, couldn't find it either.

PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Copied & pasted from the arstechnica forum:

PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

Unlike the real Beta 1 release, the RCs for it are only intended for internal use, and are not mirrored. Thus widespread distribution of these links stands a good chance of DDOSing the poor Mozilla servers, which are only hosting these for internal testing.

Furthermore, we're already in the process of spinning RC2 builds with a half-dozen fixes.

We're hoping to get Beta 1 out this week; until then please just be patient and wait a few days longer, or else grab nightly releases if you must have something up-to-date.

Note that these release candidates will NOT properly auto-update to anything in the future.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[192939495969798999]

Considering how bad things can be, even when it's something you're supposed to download, I will definitely be NOT downloading these builds. I don't want to reboot and find out that firefox super-special beta ate my hard drive or some crap. Of course, I'd prefer a beta screenshot demo or something that we really can look at more than use, so it doesn't screw up my machine but I can still see what progress is being made.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[neonprimetime]

Your username: 192939495969798999

If that's your username, I can't imagine how crazy your password is!

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Midnight Thunder]

Your username: 192939495969798999

If that's your username, I can't imagine how crazy your password is!

Looking at it, it is actually very simple: incrementing digits, spaced by the number nine.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[TaQ]

I'm running RC3 now and everything looks fine.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/usr/bin/ruby
9.times {|i| print((i+1).to_s + "9")}

;)

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[The MAZZTer]

Too late >_<

Oh well, I'll upgrade to RC3...

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Tomji]

I always thought it was the other way around.

Alpha -> Beta -> Release Candidate -> Gold
Why do they make RC's and Beta's at the same time?

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is a release candidate of the beta build, not the RC that comes out just before the final official build.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Haeleth]

#!/usr/bin/ruby
9.times {|i| print((i+1).to_s + "9")}

...your point being? Are you bragging about how it's short, or about how it's cryptic?

perl -e 'print join 9,(1..9),""'

By the way, hardcoding a path like "/usr/bin/ruby" is begging for your scripts to break. Try "/usr/bin/env ruby" -- still fragile, but likely at least to work on most Linices and BSDs.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[192939495969798999]

My password is a rot-13 of the Gettysburg address, it takes me 3 days straight just to login! ba da boom. In reality, it's more of a sign of how long ago I created my /. account -- at the time, I wanted a name that I could type fast with 2 fingers.

Thanks, and don't forget to Vote for me for President of the Internet.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Ed Avis]

I thought a 'release candidate' was normally more suitable for end users than a 'beta'. Release candidate means just that: if no important bugs are found, then this exact version will become the next release. A beta release is normally intended for testing and might have known bugs, and certainly isn't a candidate for shipping unchanged as the final release.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[digidave]

You misread it. This is a beta release candidate, so if it's good it will become the first beta release. It's a bit confusing for end users, but then this release is only for developers and official testers.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Omestes]

Its more odd than that...

It is a RC for the Beta. I guess post-Alpha, or Pre-Beta.

I remember when Beta meant buggy, and now it is more and more meaning the actual software (look at Google), I think Firefox also popularized this, since how many of use have been using it as Beta or Alpha (before it even was called Firefox), so now more and more developers are just sticking with a permanent Beta model. I think the logic is that "if we aren't finished developing it, it must be beta", which if I remember my pre-google and Firefox days correctly is a change from "if it is stable, it is RC or Gold). You can ADD features after a stable release, for Pete's sake, its called upgrades, or a revision.

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[chabotc]

Yep your absolutely right, normally a release schedule would follow;
-alpha(s)
-beta(s)
-release canidate(s)

However in this case its a release canidate for a beta release (beta1), so its not beta1 yet, nor is it anywhere near release canidate, its still just before hitting beta in the release process

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Kelson]

*sigh*

I saw the story and thought, "Couldn't they just wait until the acutal beta to post this?"

Someone's jumping the gun...

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that person in that forum must be a total tard! LOL

You've always been able to download whatever build available. Even if it's not a "release". Heck, I usually run nightly builds here, rarely will I run an official "release".

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[saleenS281]

Those poor mozilla servers! I think with the ~$72million they made last year, they can afford the bandwidth...

Re:PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THESE BUILDS

[Chelloveck]

I remember when Beta meant buggy, and now it is more and more meaning the actual software (look at Google) [...]

That's funny. I remember when "beta" meant "being tested by a limited group of users". Now it's just used to mean, "don't blame me if it breaks."

The way my momma brought me up, everything from "alpha" on up was supposed to be feature-complete. That is, all the features you intend to have in this release are present and supposed to be working. An alpha release is one you make to your own in-house testers (even if that's just yourself with a different hat). After your own tests show it to be fairly stable you stamp it "beta" and let outsiders play with it. The beta releases usually have a limited distribution, and are done to get a more real-world test than the in-house guys can do. The "release candidate" thing is relatively new, but it's a kind of post-beta test. You're saying, "Okay, here's what we think we're going to release. Play with it and if nothing serious breaks we'll ship it". Release candidates may be restricted to the beta testers, but are generally available to the userbase at large.

It's a pity that these terms have lost their meanings. "Alpha" and "beta" have simply become the developers' way of saying, "We don't want to take responsibility for this." It doesn't work? Oh, sorry, too bad, it's a beta. You didn't expect it to work, did you? Things stay in this sort of limbo for years, just because the developers don't have the cajones to say, "This is good."

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. So God did present it unto the masses, and he did rest. And on the eighth day, God looked down and saw that sin and pestilence had come unto his creation, and God said, What did you expect from a beta?

Its up to RC3

[DuncanE]

The article links to RC1.

You can aleady get release candidate 3

Or you could wait a few days an get the actual beta.

Re:Its up to RC3

[writermike]

You can aleady get release candidate 3

Quick! Someone with power tag this story "oldnewsday."

Re:Its up to RC3

[Zerbs]

Doesn't the language Beta Candidate scare anyone? Sounds like it's actually still an Alpha version. This isn't a production release candidate.

Keep up with IE

[neonprimetime]

Is the new release really deserving of the 2.0 moniker? It's hard to say, given the fact that it looks and feels very much like 1.x.

Hey, to be honest, if you want to keep up with IE, you gotta start jumping up in numbers. To the general jo-blo user, IE is light years ahead of FireFox just simply cause it's on version 7 versus version 2.

Re:Keep up with IE

[kc32]

By that logic, everybody should be using Opera.

Re:Keep up with IE

[creepynut]

Does that strategy actually work? Internet Explorer 4-6 weren't substantially different, nor has Windows been since Windows 95.

Yes, I know, "under the hood" Windows 95 and Windows XP aren't much alike, with 95 having DOS roots, and XP having NT roots. I'm talking about interface here.

Hell, even Slackware has done it.

Re:Keep up with IE

[ZachPruckowski]

If you go for a number-based versioning system, you have to make big jumps. It's hard for Joe Average to see the difference between 1.3.7 and 1.3.8 and 1.4, but 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0 is an easily understood gap.

Re:Keep up with IE

[neonprimetime]

Does that strategy actually work?

I think it's all a big game, but seriously I think there's a point where you have to cave in and raise the numbers. Developers can't be all gung-ho about NOT raising the version numbers cause otherwise users will never feel the need to update to the newer version. Example :

You have FireFox 1.1, Now FireFox 1.2 has come out ... probably not a big change, not going to upgrade. Now 1.3 comes out, same thing, who cares. 1.4 hmmm they must just be fixing minor things. 2.0 comes out, hmmm gotta get that right now, must be something important.

You have IE 5, Now IE 6 comes out ... gotta upgrade, something important. Now IE 7 comes out, gotta upgrade, something important.

Yes, there can be too many version changes (case in point Opera) ... but sometimes there can be too few also.

Re:Keep up with IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Next from Mozilla Foundation:
Firefox Starter (for third world countries, limitation of 3 open tabs at once)
Firefox Home Basic (for homeusers, support for html 3 and 4, no CSS or scripting)
Firefox Home Premium (with added bloat and without nagging popups)
Firefox Business (for small and medium business)
Firefox Enterprise (for rich organisations, popup blocker included)
Firefox Ultimate (for ultimate pr0n experience, only version without content filters)

Re:Keep up with IE

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's bullshit myself and I have yet to see anyone substanciate these claims with modern average users. Most people don't know what version of a web browser they use to begin with. Many don't even know what web browser their using. Some don't even know what a web browser IS.

Re:Keep up with IE

[fireboy1919]

But...interface is in what it does not what the menus at the top look like.

IE4 is significantly different from IE6. Most notably different is that:
1) Nearly all of the things claimed actually work.
2) DOM support
3) CSS support

In practice, that means that there are a lot of things that you can do (and Websites you can go to) with IE6 that you can't with IE4.

Firefox 1.0 to 1.5 is a pretty big jump too, IMHO, because rendering works right most of the time.

Before, if you did funky things with div manipulation that required double buffering/etc. horrible things could happen. Works now. Javascript debugging is nicer now, too.

Those are hard things to solidify.
If I had to make a comparison, I'd say that Firefox 1.0 to 1.5 is similar in # of bugfixes to IE4 to IE5.

So (IMHO) they're not going quite as overboard with numbering as Microsoft is, even.

Re:Keep up with IE

[Chabil Ha']

Right...You remember what happened to WinAmp? Where went WinAmp 2.x??? or 4.x??? For all intents and purposes, WinAmp *ought* to be at 2.x becuase nothing notable has really changed. I think the whole version number issue is more marketing hyperbole than anything. This sort of thing can back-fire on people who know better.

Re:Keep up with IE

[Tx]

What? Winamp Went to 2.94 or so, prior to 3.0. Yes, it skipped 4.x, but that was to indicate that 5.x was not a sequential development from 3.x.

Re:Keep up with IE

[baadger]

IE 7 comes out, hmm better update, something important, good God!, never trusting version numbers again...

Re:Keep up with IE

[spyrochaete]

Does that strategy actually work?

MS called their new games console "Xbox 360" because it has a 3 in it. They were afraid a 2 would make it look inferior to the PS3. Effective? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely.

Re:Keep up with IE

[jachim69]

But this one goes to 11!

Re:Keep up with IE

[buckhead_buddy]

neonprimetime wrote:

I think it's all a big game, but seriously I think there's a point where you have to cave in and raise the numbers. Developers can't be all gung-ho about NOT raising the version numbers cause otherwise users will never feel the need to update to the newer version. Example : You have FireFox 1.1, Now FireFox 1.2 has come out ... probably not a big change, not going to upgrade. Now 1.3 comes out, same thing, who cares. 1.4 hmmm they must just be fixing minor things. 2.0 comes out, hmmm gotta get that right now, must be something important. You have IE 5, Now IE 6 comes out ... gotta upgrade, something important. Now IE 7 comes out, gotta upgrade, something important. Yes, there can be too many version changes (case in point Opera) ... but sometimes there can be too few also.

For something like a web browser the version number has not been critical; it's a testosterone driven publicity marker. It's mostly hype and anything that's broken in a new version can be re-enabled via an extension.

If you look at other open source projects you can see where version numbers are very useful when used inteligently.

• First decimal - Major changes of file formats, features, and api's
• Second decimal - Features and requirement changes, but still backwards compatible
• Third decimal - Bug fixes

For example, a content management system like Subversion has big problems when they change repository formats or api's for their clients. Paying attention to their own version numbering rules ensures that their file formats and apis will work for well-established, numerically-obvious periods, but they don't require that developers will be enslaved by poor choices they may make today in the far future. Looking at their release history it's refreshing how few "red releases" (which require a reload of the repository) there have been in the past, and it's also how nice it is to see that they do have some logic in their version numbering that has worked back then and appears to work when talking about major changes to the version++ release.

Re:Keep up with IE

[hr.wien]

The Winamp thing was basically a joke. They took Winamp 2 and tacked some of Winamp3 onto it. 2 + 3 = 5 obviously. :)

Re:Keep up with IE

[the_back_sasser]

So are you saying that Mozilla should name it Firefox 360?

Re:Keep up with IE

[nuzak]

> * First decimal - Major changes of file formats, features, and api's
> * Second decimal - Features and requirement changes, but still backwards compatible
> * Third decimal - Bug fixes

Let's take Linux as an example:

• First decimal: 2
  
• Second decimal: 6
  
• Third decimal: Major changes of file formats, features, and api's. And bug fixes. And new bugs.
  

Re:Keep up with IE

[Omestes]

Hmmmm version 1.1.134.5b or 1.1.134.6a?

Re:Keep up with IE

[Firehed]

Furthermore, it was done to indicate that it combined the best features of 2.x and 3.x. 3.x was fairly different than 2.x but really only in UI (added funky skin support) and hardly an internal overhaul that should cause the full version change. Apparently it was also pretty buggy, because it didn't last long.

Integrated spellchecker???

[TopShelf]

An integrated spellchecker sounds dangerous - pulling up a long /. comments page could cause my CPU to melt down...

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[rbochan]

It doesn't spell check the entire page, it's for text input forms.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[gEvil (beta)]

Hopefully it only spellchecks text input fields. If not, then I'm right there with you.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[creepynut]

What would be the purpose of checking the spelling of web pages that the user (generally) has no control over?

I'd say it's probably safe to assume the spellchecker is for input fields and textareas, where it'd be useful.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Dasch]

It's only for text fields, although one filled with text may slow down the browser. I think I read something on the Firefox dev newsgroup about doing the checking asynchronously, which would alleviate the pressure on the computer.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[MrShaggy]

I have been using then 2.x BON ECHO Release for quite some time. I haven't looked back. At first there were only few things that seemed ok. But the longer I used it, the more I realized that what I have is really nice. The spell checker is barely noticeable, but sometimes it doesn't work that well. Sometimes it will give you the options for a mis-spelled word that has nothing to do with the word itself. I think as time goes by things like that will improve. It does seem to start faster. But there is not much difference in the over-all look.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[mspohr]

Duh... the spell checker only checks the text you type.

It's not there for the slashdot spelling Nazis to check spelling on web sites.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[cortana]

Perhaps it is the first step towards the production of an automated spelling nazi bot.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[LocoMan]

The one thing I wonder about the spellchecker is wether it'll recognize which language you're using. For example, I use firefox in english, but I visit and write to both english and spanish forums and websites, and it would be annoying if I was writting in a forum in spanish and firefox would be underlining all words as errors.

IIRC Word does recognize it (or did it back when I use it.. lately I have openoffice at home and use word at work only to read stuff other people send me). Back then I had it set to spanish as the default language, but it I started to write in english it would first started to mark everything as an error, but a couple of words later it recognized them as english words and switched the spell checker to english, so I guess it wouldn't be too hard to implement something like that in FF.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Will2k_is_here]

It better max out somewhere. Wikipedia will be hellish.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Man of E]

Imagine a grammar checker -- it might make you loose you're mind.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Anonymous Coward]

Im writting dhis coment frrom Firefox 2, it actualy underscorres everithing it doesnt recognice.

The trick is right-clicking on the text field - it offers a submenu called Languages, it allows for language selection and even offers to download additional dictionaries.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Blakey Rat]

I wonder if it's actually "integrated" with the OS X spell-checker? Or am I going to have to enter all my custom words in YET ANOTHER SPELLING DICTIONARY!?

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Cylix]

I'm already working on that...

Not sure how this feature slipped through the proverbial fingers, but I'm making progress.

Release one should quickly highlight all spelling and grammar errors and provide a pop-up to submit your flames!

Hopefully, we can toss together an "instant" flame template that will use pieces of the original work and simply automate the entire process.

I'm not sure if the title "USENET" is already taken, but I'm seriously considering it.

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Random832]

Im writting dhis coment frrom Firefox 2, it actualy underscorres everithing it doesnt recognice.

I take it you're testing it out?

Re:Integrated spellchecker???

[Ash-Fox]

I wonder if it's actually "integrated" with the OS X spell-checker?

It isn't integrated, if you want integration use Camino.

Extensions!

[MarkByers]

"What features would you like in your next generation browser?"

Extensions!

"Does Firefox 2.0 meet your needs?"

Yes!

"What would you like to see improved?"

Opera.

IE7

[CDPatten]

Flame me if you want, but this just isn't as good as IE 7 beta 3. They are going to need to do better than this to stop IE 7 from steam rolling the browser to under 5% share.

Re:IE7

[stevey]

OK I'll bite.

In which ways specifically isn't it as good?

Rendering? Standards compliance? Customization? Stability? Features?

Re:IE7

[DuncanE]

Im not gonna flame ya, but does IE7 have a spell checker? If not then its behind FF yeah?

Why do you think IE7 is better?

Re:IE7

[Fred_A]

In which ways specifically isn't it as good?

It won't come bundled with Windows.

Re:IE7

[KiloByte]

Flame me if you want, but this just isn't as good as IE 7 beta 3.

Ok, so if you're asking for it, one question:
name at least one thing in which IE7 is better than Firefox
("it supports ActiveX" doesn't count)

Re:IE7

[Junior Samples]

But then, Firefox is the best choice for Windows 2000 and earlier operating systems since Microsoft chose not to make IE7 compatable with these OS's.

Re:IE7

[rbochan]

cold solder joints?

Re:IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

How about tab thumbnail previews or zoom (not just text size change but actual zoom)? More responsive operation in general.. Lower memory consumption and far, far, far lower memory leakage. Better integration with the rest of the ecosystem, such as Windows authentication on sites (used on many intranets, for example). The in-page UI widgets (buttons, textfields and so on) also look and feel more normal in IE than in Firefox.

Those are some that immediately pop into mind..

Re:IE7

[hotfireball]

Ohreally? So can I run that ultra-cool IE 7 beta 3 on my MacOSX and Solaris? Or you just forget to mention of which feature is better in IE 7 over Firefox?

Re:IE7

[ZachPruckowski]

The in-page UI widgets (buttons, textfields and so on) also look and feel more normal in IE than in Firefox.

That sounds like "It does something slightly differently from the market leader, therefore it's wrong", which is a [poor] reason not to adopt something (familiarity), but not an objective reason why IE is better.

Re:IE7

[KiloByte]

tab thumbnail previews

That's new. Good.

zoom (not just text size change but actual zoom)

I hope it's done better than in Opera (where it breaks a lot of pages), but it's a very good thing.

More responsive operation in general..

To the contrary, a page loaded with ads will never more responsive. And it lacks adblock and co.

Lower memory consumption and far, far, far lower memory leakage

It's buggy extensions what leaks memory

Windows authentication on sites

That's a huge negative.

The in-page UI widgets (buttons, textfields and so on) also look and feel more normal in IE than in Firefox.

"normal", in, like, Gnome? In KDE? On rotten fruits?

Re:IE7

[westlake]

name at least one thing in which IE7 is better than Firefox ("it supports ActiveX" doesn't count)

It counta for users in markets where IE is still the dominant browser snd the baseline OEM install.

Re:IE7

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You laugh. I laugh. The vast majority of users don't give a damn...

Re:IE7

[Mant]

I've been using IE7 beta 3 for a while now, it is quite nice, but the only feature I've found useful that firefox lacks the the ability to save tables in web page as Excel sheets. The other features just seem to be catch up.

Re:IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not microsoft

Re:IE7

[swansontec]

While many little rendering bugs have been fixed, the IE rendering model is still fundamentally broken: http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

Re:IE7

[Gadget_Guy]

But then, Firefox is the best choice for Windows 2000 and earlier operating systems since Microsoft chose not to make IE7 compatable with these OS's.

Unfortunately this will change when Firefox 3.0 is release and they choose to stop supporting the Win 9x operating systems. I wonder how long after that it will be before Windows 2000 falls off the supported list too.

Re:IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

Installed base

Re:IE7

[Fred_A]

Actually it wasn't really meant in jest. While it's debatable whether the new version of IE will shrink the Firefox marketshare, the fact remains that one comes preinstalled on the dominant desktop while the other must be willfully sought out and installed.

In the end whatever technical qualities both may have (and I can't speak for IE, since I've never used it), most users will just go with what they already have. As you point out, they don't really care about the technical stuff as long as the browser more or less works.

Re:IE7

[Ash-Fox]

("it supports ActiveX" doesn't count)

I've seen a Mozilla/Firefox extention that added active x support.

Re:IE7

[mdfst13]

"the only feature I've found useful that firefox lacks the the ability to save tables in web page as Excel sheets."

If you have Excel (at least the Office version that I use at work), you can do that without IE7. Admittedly, under the hood, it's probably using IE. However, it would be using IE6, because I don't have IE7 installed at work. Anyway, I can do this without actively opening a web browser, only clicking on buttons in Excel.

If you don't have Excel, why do you care?

Re:IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

As Much as i like firefox, one thing IE7 does have is zoom in a web page (lower right corner), ive sent mozilla a comment about it. Hey dont ask if u dont want an answer

Author has never seen Spellbound extension

[elrous0]

There have been other add-ins that check spelling in browser forms, such as IESpell for Internet Explorer and GNU ASpell (which I currently use with Opera) but these require user intervention to start the spell check for each field. Firefox 2's checker automatically highlights misspelled words with a dotted red line.

The Spellbound extension already does this for Firefox.

-Eric

Re:Author has never seen Spellbound extension

[horb]

Whcih does not work with the latest version of firefox.

On related news ...

[rabalde]

... Firefox Usage Passes 15 Percent in US

Re:On related news ...

[spyrochaete]

A few months old now, but likely indicative of trends:

Canada leads the world in Firefox Usage (love that capitalization)
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/content/view/1247 /

Firefox 3.0

[MarkByers]

"They are going to need to do better than this"

Yes, it's called Firefox 3.0.

Users beware

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an end-user product. It's not even a beta version. It's a release candidate that may or may not become a beta. Do not bet your business or your precious bookmark collection on this release. Extensions and themes will be disabled and only very few can be reactivated by updated versions. Most authors have not yet made updates for their extensions and themes. If you want to test the Firefox beta 1 release candidate 1, backup your profile first.

Re:Users beware

[rahlquist]

Hence the nightly tester tools extension that lets you get past the version # game with extensions and themes.

Re:Users beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Version numbering is not a game. It is done to protect users from untested combinations. There are very few cases where an end user might be able to continue using an outdated extension or theme with no problems at all. On of those cases is when authors got the compatibility wrong and minor security upgrades are treated like functionality updates. In almost every other case the compatibility warnings should be taken seriously. The incompatibilities may often be subtle, but even subtle incompatibilities can cause big headaches. In this case, the new Firefox thoroughly breaks extensions and themes, and unless you're working on one or the other, you shouldn't override this safety mechanism.

Re:Users beware

[drinkypoo]

In this case, the new Firefox thoroughly breaks extensions and themes, and unless you're working on one or the other, you shouldn't override this safety mechanism.

With the last bon echo beta I used, I found that the majority of my extensions would work fine on it after I forced them. I have a cleaner, less leaky set of extensions now, and I'm interested to see how things will turn out.

I intend to file any bug reports where I have enough information to actually be useful. This is a useful way to contribute to the development of both firefox and my favorite extensions.

Don't oversimplify the situation. This is slashdot. You're supposed to overcomplicate it.

Spellchecker?

[wondafucka]

So does the integrated spellchecker automatically block /. posts with misspellings? How about blocking webpages WITHOUT misspellings?

Speaking of Misss Spellings, how is old Tori doing? She must be taking her dad's death hard.

Re:Spellchecker?

[gEvil (beta)]

No kidding. Who's gonna cast her in shows now?!?

Re:Spellchecker?

[spyrochaete]

What spell checker has ever blocked content? Does Word prevent you from opening documents with misspellings? The grammar nazis are on Slashdot, not in software.

Firefox's spell checker only checks text input fields. You can right-click any text field and choose whether it should be spellchecked (default is yes). Why inform you of misspellings on a static page you can't fix?

And I'm sure Tori is beside herself with grief. Now that daddy's gone she'll never work again.

Re:Spellchecker?

[Anonymous Coward]

"She must be taking her dad's death hard"

She's inherited millions to console herself with... won't bring back dear old dad, of course...

Re:Spellchecker?

[wondafucka]

Maybe her and Pia Zidora (sp?) can star in a movie together.

Beta candidate?

[johansalk]

As if alpha, beta, and RC weren't enough?

Re:Beta candidate?

[LunarOne]

What happened to the Alpha candidate? Well, anyways once it becomes actual beta test software - THEN let me know.

Re:Beta candidate?

[aapold]

If it was released to the public, its not a candidate anymore.

Re:Beta candidate?

[mlefevre]

There are hourly builds from the 1.5 branch, the 2.0 branch, and the trunk which will become 3.0, and they are all released to the public in the sense of being available on the ftp server. The source code is available publically all the time from CVS. The defining factor is when they actually announce a "release" as released, and that hasn't happened yet.

Re:Beta candidate?

[bunratty]

The Firefox 2 Beta 1 builds are all candidates until the final is announced. The latest is Firefox 2 Beta 1 RC 3, but there might be more changes before Firefox 2 Beta 1 is officially released.

Re:Beta candidate?

[nine-times]

Really-- I remember when "alpha", "beta", and "release candidate" each meant something specific. Now Betas are apparently intended for general public use, and developers plan to have 3 release candidates. What's the point anymore?

Re:Beta candidate?

[drinkypoo]

There are hourly builds from the 1.5 branch, the 2.0 branch, and the trunk which will become 3.0, and they are all released to the public in the sense of being available on the ftp server. The source code is available publically all the time from CVS. The defining factor is when they actually announce a "release" as released, and that hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, but this is in between. It's not an hourly build, it's a release candidate. In the really real world, that means that someone thought this version might be ready for release. If that's not what they think about these testing builds, then they shouldn't be called release candidates. They're betas, or more technology previews, or whatever, but not RCs.

Re:Beta candidate?

[Kelson]

They're betas, or more technology previews, or whatever, but not RCs.

It's a release candidate FOR THE BETA.

As in they think it might be worth releasing as a beta.

Mozilla seems to be going this route: Alpha --> Beta Release Candidate --> Beta --> Release Candidate --> Final, with hourly/nightly/etc. builds in between.

Re:Beta candidate?

[drinkypoo]

That's stupid. A release candidate for a beta? Here's a hint, when it doesn't crash every five minutes of use or less, you can call it a beta. That is all. (This test version isn't even to THAT point yet, at least on windows xp - but maybe it was my extensions. It was doing it before I used NTT to mark a few of them (not even all of them) as usable.

Re:Beta candidate?

[mlefevre]

"It's not an hourly build, it's a release candidate."

Actually I think Mozilla only described it as a "beta candidate", and that was just in a message on the developer mailing list, and in the ftp server directory name (just Mozilla's server, not the mirror network, hence why they don't the whole world downloading it).

In the really real world, that means that someone thought this version might be ready for release

They thought that this build might be ready to be a beta. The idea being that it would get a bit more "internal" (hard to define what internal is when everything is available to the public all the time) testing before they put it up on the website as a beta.

What should a build that might be released as a beta be called? Or should they just release a random nightly build as a beta without testing a particular build more thoroughly first?

Re:Beta candidate?

[drinkypoo]

What should a build that might be released as a beta be called?

An Alpha.

If you have any more questions that easy, I'll be happy to answer them.

Re:Beta candidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're suggesting that they should release an alpha, let a few dozen people test it for a couple of days, and then release the result to millions labelled as a beta. If they did that, the beta would have been out months ago, and everyone would have complained about the crappy quality. Alternatively, they would have released about a dozen alphas by now, and nobody would know what was going on.

This isn't some 2-bit project on Sourceforge with 100 users.

The Google Extensions

[Venotar]

Has anyone tried any of the RC's with the various Google extensions (notebook and browser sync) installed? Any word on how well they work?

Re:The Google Extensions

[The MAZZTer]

Both are compatible, according to Firefox, which is surprising since not many extensions are. Guess Google is on the ball.

But, I have both disabled since I never really used them, so I can't easily check at the moment to see if they work.

In an unrelated note, Firefox flags both "Firefox" and "Google" as typos. Whoops.

Re:The Google Extensions

[Venotar]

FYI - went ahead and tested FireFox beta1 RC3 and none of the Google extensions function correctly at the moment.

As always, back up your Mozilla directory before playing with experimental builds ;)

NOT released to the public!

[bigbigbison]

Over at Shacknews, there was a message posted asking people not to download this

Heads up for Firefox lovers.

There's a bunch of links floating around Digg, Ars Technica, etc. for Beta 1 RCs. Please don't download these. These are internal builds we're using to test out Beta 1 before releasing it. The ones out there are already obsolete, they won't auto-update to anything in the future, and worst, this stuff isn't on the mirror network, so people are kind of DDOSing the Mozilla FTP server. Just be patient and we'll hopefully have Beta 1 out within the week.

Thanks,
Your friendly Firefox developer

Re:NOT released to the public!

[creepynut]

It's sad when all it takes is some excited fanboy posting a link to the FTP server and saying the Beta is released.

Not the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last.

Re:NOT released to the public!

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not even a real beta version, just a beta candidate.

Re:NOT released to the public!

[Kelson]

And the real beta will probably go out to the mirrors, thereby avoiding the DDOS problem... or rather, it would, if people were willing to wait a few days!

Once they integrate enough extensions

[also-rr]

They can rename it the Mozilla Suite and then some people can come along and release a lightweight browser with none of the cruft called Firefox.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[TheFlyingGoat]

Whoever marked this as a troll is a tool. It's pretty funny, but also kind of true in the eyes of a lot of people. The reason I switched to Firefox wasn't because of the neat features, it was because it used less memory and was significantly faster than IE. With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated, to the point that it is taking 42mb of RAM to display only this thread on Slashdot. IE is taking 22mb to do the exact same thing. That's just rediculous.

I really wish Firefox would go back to the lightweight browser it once was. The power was the ability to have extensions to do anything you wanted, but it was my choice which ones I wanted using my system resources.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[magical_trevor]

You might be interested in http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/ then, since it's basically a lightweight version of mozilla/firefox. "K-Meleon is designed to be a browser only with a minimal interface that emphasizes speed and utility. It is not a suite and so does not include features like an e-mail client and web page editor that can bloat and slow it down. The K-Meleon developers will consider enhancements that improve the performance and usefulness of the browser."

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[infestedsenses]

They can rename it the Mozilla Suite and then some people can come along and release a lightweight browser with none of the cruft called Firefox.

Most of the "integrated extensions" are simply adding subtle functionality to existing functions, such as the ability to drag around tabs, or the planned improved management of search plugins (until now you had to delete search engines via your file explorer or install a special extension, what the hell is up with that?). So I really don't see how they are bloating the browser, they're improving usability that should not be needed in the form of an extension.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[spyrochaete]

Just curious, what is it about Firefox you find bloaty? I find it to be a very lightweight browser, though the new spell checker is a little above and beyond (which I like).

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated, to the point that it is taking 42mb of RAM to display only this thread on Slashdot. IE is taking 22mb to do the exact same thing.

IE is *reporting* that it is taking 22mb, but is actually using a lot more if you consider how its integrated into the OS and how those integrated components are not reported in iexplore.exe's memory usage.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Borland]

The parent isn't a troll, but it misses a large point. Firefox is still better and slimmer than the Mozilla suite and has better features than IE. A strictly minimal browser will not capture the larger market: Otherwise Lynx and other text browsers would rule the world.

I mean think about it, images hog bandwidth and memory. If you want to be small and efficient then a text browser is the wave of the future. People like features, they like the appearance of progress. You can go too far with both and that will always be an issue (which some other plucky startup, or multinational, will solve).

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[StingRayGun]

I agree 100%. Firefox neds to get smaller not bigger. Looks like the guys at Nielson/Norman were right, OSS will end up in feature creep. FF is by far my favorite OSS... too bad.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[elcid73]

Exactly! Good grief. that was the number one argument (next to Open Source) against Opera... "it's bloatware!" several years ago. Now, FF users scream "it doesn't have extensions!" ...but the bloat comments are gone.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[TheFlyingGoat]

I understand that, but my main point is that Firefox used to take as little ram as IE. IE may take less for specific reasons, but Firefox shouldn't use that as an excuse, they should use it as a challenge.

I don't use/need mouse gestures, spell checking, etc. Other people don't need the color eyedropper extension that I use. Those things should be in extensions only.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated, [...] That's just rediculous. (emphasis added)

Congratulations! You've demonstrated, far more eloquently than I ever could, why an integrated spell-checker is so important in this day and age :)

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[bigbigbison]

You might want to try K-Meleon or Opera.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Kelson]

With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated

I always wonder what releases people are including when they say things like this. There have only been two full releases so far: 1.0 and 1.5. If those are the only ones you're counting, there's only one release in which Firefox could get "more bloated" -- 1.5. So talking about "with every release" seems kind of disingenuous. Even including the 2.0 series, that's only two jumps: 1.0 to 1.5, and 1.5 to 2.0.

Or are you including alphas, pre-alphas, and betas? 1.0 being "more bloated" than 0.9, and 0.9 being "more bloated" than 0.8, and so on?

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[TheFlyingGoat]

Pure symantics. Even though I'm a developer, I refer to release candidates and point releases as releases, even if they're not "full releases". I think it's quite obvious that when people talk about previous releases being less bloated and faster, they're referring to 0.X betas. Even if we go with the strict definition of releases, 1.0 was faster and less bloated than 1.5, which is faster and less bloated than 2.0.

If you want to dig into this further, take a look at the Firebird roadmap (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/firebird -roadmap.html), on which the first 4 betas mention speed increases, size improvements, and "lots of destruction". It's obvious that Firefox has gotten larger over time, and it will only continue until the developers realize that people would rather have a fast browser that can use extentions than a slow browser with everything in it by default.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[AnyoneEB]

I agree. Maybe these new features are not really significantly adding to memory/resources usage, but, IMO, if something can be implemented as an extension/plug-in, it should be. A spell-checker extension already exists. SpellBound was discussed in another thread. Does the new spell checking feature do anything that SpellBound could not do? If so, why is it built-in instead of being implemented as a default-enabled extension like Talkback and DOM Inspector?

For a good example of a modular application, see WinAMP. Everything is a plug-in. With no input plugins, it cannot open any media files. With no output plugins, it cannot play any media files. With no other plug-ins, the GUI is very simple. (I realize that Amarok/GStreamer have similar very modular designs.) Everything is kept separate whenever possible, so unwanted parts can simply be removed by the user.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Kelson]

people would rather have a fast browser that can use extentions than a slow browser with everything in it by default.

And yet there's ample evidence that it's possible to have a fast browser with everything in it by default, so I don't think those are the only choices...

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[WuphonsReach]

The reason I switched to Firefox wasn't because of the neat features, it was because it used less memory and was significantly faster than IE. With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated, to the point that it is taking 42mb of RAM to display only this thread on Slashdot. IE is taking 22mb to do the exact same thing. That's just rediculous.

Have you mucked with?

config.trim_on_minimize = true
(Useful in some scenarios when nothing else works.)

browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
(A better thing to muck with. When set to "-1", Firefox assigns it a value based on your total amount of RAM, I think. Setting it to a lower value such as 2 or 4 should result in less memory used. The Mozilla site has details on how this setting works.)

Changing the second item from the default (-1) to a lower value (2) made a big difference in the amount of RAM that Firefox was chewing up on my system.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

Some further explanation:

• The first is Windows - only and trims the resident working set (RSS) of the FF process till you maximize it again. It doesn't decrease the real total process size (the "Virtual Memory Size" column hidden by default in the task manager).

• The second limits the number of prerendered old pages the browser retains per window/tab (in case you hit the {BACK} button). It can reduce purposeful memory usage but does nothing for memory leaks.

After browsing for a day or two with lots of tabs, I can close all windows and tabs but one simple text page and still have hundreds of megabytes of memory in use. Worse, browsing new pages causes this figure to grow, so it's not just a matter of not returning unused memory to the OS. I can also browse <about:cache?device=memory> and find old items that should have been recycled long ago.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[raduf]

      Just out of curiosity I looked at how much memory my Firefox was using with about 3 windows open. To my surprise: 95. "WOW!" I thought. "Way to much!". But then it hit me: I have almost a gig of ram and the main activity on my computer is... browsing. So is it much from a technical point of view? Yes it sure is. But is it that bad? In the real world It's Ok. Not because I have a lot of ram (that's where we technical minds get stuck: on the tehnical details) but because brosing isn't a side effect, it's actualy quite an important activity for a computer user. So the memory is very well used.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[TheFlyingGoat]

I know what you're saying and thought about that while making my post. The problem comes in when I'm trying to do other memory intensive tasks in the background while trying to browse the web. If Firefox continues on this same path, it won't be long before it's using 100mb to look at the same site. People like to get on Microsoft's case about each OS release using more and more system resources, but Firefox is doing the same thing.

I just think it's silly that Firefox will take 44mb of ram when I have a Win98 computer (soon to be linux once I decide on a distro) with 32mb of TOTAL ram that I can use for browsing.

Oh, and I have used all the memory tweaks that people have recommended, which is probably why I'm not using even more memory.

Re:Once they integrate enough extensions

[raduf]

      32 ram is a bit to little for contemporary software... the sooner you put a (maybe older) linux the better. Maybe an earlier version of firefox would work better?

      You don't really want all the bells and whisles of a newer browser... for a couple of years i used konqueror (the KDE browser) just because it was the lightest browser i've seen. After a couple of releases though i didn't notice anything getting remarcably better, but on my machine it became unusable. So i understand you :)

Grrrrr

[themishkin]

So will this one delete all my bookmarks and remove all my blocked site too? Don't forget to back all that up before you update, I got screwed on the last one.

OS X Spellchecking

[spykemail]

I'm a Safari user, but I support Firefox because it takes market share away from Microsoft (which can only be a good thing). Any word on how spell checking is implemented in the OS X version of FF 2.0? I was under the impression that any application in OS X can use the OS to do spell checking. Is FF 2.0 going to utilize that or is it going to do a bunch of work it doesn't have to?

Re:OS X Spellchecking

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Firefox does all the spellchecking work itself. Doing work it doesn't have to is sort of Firefox's modus operandi anyway.

Look at XUL. Creating an XML language to describe user interfaces make sense - it's why GTK+ did it with Glade before the Mozilla Project was even started. But it goes a step beyond that in Mozilla. Instead of using native widgets, XUL is implemented using the browser rendering engine and uses JavaScript event handlers to implement UI functionality. This leaves you with widgets that are look almost native but are just kind of out of place - which is why Firefox widgets in OS X aren't spellchecked by the OS. Plus, thanks to the use of JavaScript, the UI is substantially slower than it has to be.

At a lower level you have the "Netscape Portable Runtime" (still called the NSPR despite the fact that Netscape has abandoned Mozilla). This reimplements the C runtime library. Yes, seriously. Part of Firefox's memory problems are almost certainly caused by the fact that Firefox uses a custom memory allocator instead of the native C runtime allocator which would likely be highly optimized for the local platform. But they also reimplement silly things like the string functions in the C runtime and a bunch of other parts of the C runtime.

Firefox is a prime example of Not Invented Here Syndrome. They reuse practically nothing and rewrite practically everything.

Re:OS X Spellchecking

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that Firefox under OS X behaves even vaguely like a regular Cocoa app. Unfortunately it doesn't even use Cocoa and supports none of the native features. This is why Firefox is a total non-starter on OS X to anyone that cares about the additional features that Cocoa provides.

e.g. Ctrl-A doesn't take you to the start of a line on Firefox. Ctrl-Space doesnt set a mark. Ctrl-k doesn't cut to the next mark or end of line. Ctrl-y doesn't paste whatever you yanked. The Services menu doesn't work. Integrated spell checking doesn't use the same dictionary. Presumably it doesn't support right to left text entry either.

Re:OS X Spellchecking

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like you could do some good if you were helping them instead of just criticizing them.

Worried about data loss? Wait for 2.0 final.

[MarkByers]

If you are worried about losing data, you should wait until Firefox tells you that it is time to update, rather than risking a beta release candidate for which there is no support.

Opera Killer?

[Moskie]

If the UI of FireFox 2 contains more things that allow the user to dynamically alter the UI, such as moving tabs around, it would be incentive for people like me to give it a shot over my current browser of choice, Opera....

Re:Opera Killer?

[fireboy1919]

You can do that with the current one without any extensions installed. Just drag 'em with the left mouse button.

Is that the only dynamic thing you're looking for?

Re:Opera Killer?

[Jugalator]

Huh? You can already drag tabs at least in Firefox 1.5, Opera 8, and Opera 9...

Re:Opera Killer?

[KoopaTroopa]

Out of curiosity, do you know if can you combine windows' tab groups, or pull a separate window in as a tab of another window? I've periodically wanted to do this a lot more than rearranging the order of tabs.

Thanks!

Re:Opera Killer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, do you know if can you combine windows' tab groups, or pull a separate window in as a tab of another window? I've periodically wanted to do this a lot more than rearranging the order of tabs.

You can in Opera ;)

Re:Opera Killer?

[KoopaTroopa]

Fair enough :) Thanks for the info.

SVG

[pubjames]

Has the SVG support improved? For the more complex stuff - animation and interactivity?

I've alway liked the idea of SVG overtaking Flash as the format of choice for more complex multimedia online, but nobody seems to use it very much. Any ideas why not? Why isn't the OSS community promoting SVG more?

Re:SVG

[nick.ian.k]

It's because most browsers don't support it, and because a lot of people don't care much about graphics formats. Look how long it's taken the mighty PNG to come as far as it has.

Re:SVG

[bigpat]

I've alway liked the idea of SVG overtaking Flash as the format of choice for more complex multimedia online, but nobody seems to use it very much. Any ideas why not? Why isn't the OSS community promoting SVG more?

Promote something that you can't yet use as it was intended? I came looking at this thread specifically to find out about SVG support in firefox 2 and see if anyone had posted about it. Once a sufficient subset of SVG features are supported in firefox, you will see development and content start to accelerate. Already there is a thriving community of SVG developers out there and with the ability to inlcude rich inline SVGs in your html pages along with ajax interactivity. You will see content and applications that are far better and better integrated than what you could do with either flash or ajax alone.

Re:SVG

[RobertF]

No. Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0 use the same underlying Gecko rendering engine (Gecko 1.8 IIR). Gecko 1.9 brings many rendering improvements that Web Developer's would love, but they didn't use it. The reasoning the Firefox developers gave was that resynching Firefox with the new Gecko engine would take too long; they wanted to focus on features and have a new release ready to compete with IE 7.

Re:SVG

[cyfer2000]

SVG development has been focused on code cleaning and bug fix for some time. You may see some speed and stability improvement in 2.0. And much more speed improvement in 3.0.

Re:SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

well--flash is truly interactive, and svg isn't--so in that regard, they are somewhat akin to apples and oranges. except in this case, not only is flash interactive, it also animates like svg. i think you will continue to find that svg is a niche concept.

Re:SVG

[tyroney]

That's odd, there's a whole section on interactivity in the SVG 1.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/interact.html

Not to mention one for animation, and another for scripting, and one on extensibility. (embedding whatever, even flash if you wanted.) Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you should have specified that you were referring to what's commonly implemented in viewers at the moment. Or I could be confused, and just not quite realize what you're talking about, in which case feel free to fill me in so that I can learn something. Or was this just a quick troll?

Re:SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, we get speed and textpaths in Firefox 3 (Cairo+Glitz).

I don't see the point...

[vasanth]

i don't see the point in having an integrated spellchecker.. that's what FireFox plug-ins are for... the FireFox developers should concentrate on just building a solid stable browser and allow others to add features like spellchecker etc using the plug-in feature..

Re:I don't see the point...

[sshutt]

My spellings terrible as is my typing at times, integrated spell checking means I dont have to hope theres an extension written for the new version that'll check my spelling for me

Re:I don't see the point...

[baadger]

Maybe there will be a compile time option for it? Good for gentoo users

Re:I don't see the point...

[westlake]

i don't see the point in having an integrated spellchecker

I have wasted too much time trying to make sense of posts with spelling and grammatical errors that would embarrass a fourth grader not to think that the need is there.

Re:I don't see the point...

[spyrochaete]

Most people don't know that extensions exist, never mind how to install them. A built-in spell checker will improve the whole internet! What's the problem? Mozilla already has a great spell checker engine from its Thunderbird products and it looks like they just ported it over to Firefox.

Re:I don't see the point...

[Spliffster]

the spellchecker is already in the mozilla codebase. it was added during work on nvu (the wysiwyg editor from daniel glazman) and then committed to the mozilla 1.8 branch. so why should they disable it if it is already in there anyway (just for adding duplicate work with an extension later on, note extensions are usually more ressource consuming and slower).

Cheers,
-S

Extensions built-in?

[chrismcdirty]

Do the developers plan on integrating popular extensions until the codebase is as bloated as Mozilla of the olden days?

And OSX. And linux.

[pubjames]

In fact it's the best browser for any operating system other than Windows. In fact, it's the best choice for Windows users too!

Trying it out now

[ArcherB]

I am curious to see if the spel checker works. Yep... sure does.

Re:Trying it out now

[Adam9]

Relax, it's not even a released baita build!

Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Theovon]

Actually, I'm not opposed to all these nice new features they've added, although it might be nice to have some optional for smaller systems. Also, I am aware that Firefox developers fix bugs all the time. They're just not going after the REALLY BIG ones.

My biggest beef with Firefox is that it still crashes frequently and has massive memory leaks that require me to quit and restart the browser on a daily basis. It doesn't take much to get Firefox to grow to 1GB in memory footprint and start causing my system to thrash. A fundamental flaw is that it does not release memory back to the OS, so when you close tabs and windows, the process doesn't shrink. While this isn't directly Firefox's fault, there are lots of ways around this that they refuse to implement. On the other hand, the true memory leaks ARE their fault.

I once suggested a solution to their problems. The basic philosophy is that they want to fix the crashes. But at this rate, they never will, so it's better to find ways to limit the damage done by crashes. The best solution, IMHO, is to stop using threads. Instead, fork a separate process for each document and one more for the UI, and use IPC for them to communicate. This way, when a web page or plugin inevitably causes the browser to crash or even just grow too big, killing that one window or tab won't bring down the whole browser, and the memory it used will be returned to the OS. This will have the side-effect of making the browser much more responsive, because you're not kept from switching tabs while a DNS lookup hangs the browser for one document. Naturally, they didn't like my solution.

I think stability isn't really all that important to them, at least not proactively; if you're just reactive to bugs, you're never going to get a solid product.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about? I have Firefox installed on at least 12 PC's running at least three different OS's and none have seen a crash in months. Maybe you should remove the offending extentions, add-ons, or non-Firefox related software that are causing you trouble.

My current Firefox session running on an old Mandrake system has been running for at least 5 weeks non-stop.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn off history caching then. If all you do is trawl around picture heavy porn sites then that cache will grow very large - although there should be an option to keep this history cache a sensible size IMO.

And as for the crashes, having not seen Firefox crash for ages, I guess you've got some bad memory in your computer.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[spyrochaete]

I have 1.5GB of DDR400 so maybe I'm in the minority, but as long as I've used Firefox (maybe a year before 1.0) I can count the number of crashes on one hand. No doubt there are inelegant programming solutions to many issues with the browser, but they are all but transparent from my experience. And I use about 20 extensions!

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Metroid72]

I agree about the memory leak issues. Somewhat disagree about the crashing, however, I notice that every time the "Quality Feedback Agent" wizard opens, FF always crashes on me.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[spyrochaete]

I know it's important to send crash details to Mozilla, but ever since I read an Ars Technica article I can't stand that damn Quality Feedback Agent. The odd time Firefox crashes you're greeted with a window saying "Welcome to the Firefox Quality Feedback Agent". Don't friggin welcome me! Console me for having to bear the inconvenience of a crash!

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[bunratty]

My biggest beef with Firefox is that it still crashes frequently and has massive memory leaks that require me to quit and restart the browser on a daily basis. It doesn't take much to get Firefox to grow to 1GB in memory footprint and start causing my system to thrash. A fundamental flaw is that it does not release memory back to the OS, so when you close tabs and windows, the process doesn't shrink. While this isn't directly Firefox's fault, there are lots of ways around this that they refuse to implement. On the other hand, the true memory leaks ARE their fault.

Any clues to how we could reproduce this extreme memory leak so we can write up a bug report and get it fixed would be greatly appreciated!

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[belg4mit]

You mean like Netscape used to have?

Seems to me FF threw the baby out with the bath water when they started,
dropping a lot of the sane and useful stuff for pretty icons and other "funky" UI.

Being able to limit the memory and disk cache sizes was quite important if you have
limited hardware and abnormal browsing habits.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[mrchaotica]

The best solution, IMHO, is to stop using threads. Instead, fork a separate process for each document and one more for the UI, and use IPC for them to communicate. This way, when a web page or plugin inevitably causes the browser to crash or even just grow too big, killing that one window or tab won't bring down the whole browser, and the memory it used will be returned to the OS. This will have the side-effect of making the browser much more responsive, because you're not kept from switching tabs while a DNS lookup hangs the browser for one document. Naturally, they didn't like my solution.

The problem isn't that they're using threads, it's that they're doing too much in the same thread. If they just spawned a thread for each tab it would solve the responsiveness problems without the overhead of multiple processes.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[MldZBS]

I have to agree with the above comments. I've hardly ever had Firefox crash on my recently. Uses a lot of memory, and can get sluggish at times (probably because of it's memory usage, restarting normally fixes it), but they're getting there with the stability.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[stef0x77]

... The best solution, IMHO, is to stop using threads. Instead, fork a separate process for each document and one more for the UI, and use IPC for them to communicate. This way, when a web page or plugin inevitably causes the browser to crash or even just grow too big, killing that one window or tab won't bring down the whole browser, and the memory it used will be returned to the OS. This will have the side-effect of making the browser much more responsive, because you're not kept from switching tabs while a DNS lookup hangs the browser for one document. Naturally, they didn't like my solution.

Do you have any idea what that would entail? Such an architecture change would basically mean rewriting the browser. As a seasoned programmer I shudder at the thought of having to implement such a fundamental change in a codebase like Mozilla. I'm not suprised they "didn't like it".

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[spyrochaete]

If they just spawned a thread for each tab it would solve the responsiveness problems without the overhead of multiple processes.

Out of curiosity, what would happen if one tab's thread crashed? Would it take down the whole browser? Or something worse?

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[SpinyNorman]

Generally something like accessing an uninitialized pointer, or freed memory, will take down the whole process. If the application is designed such that threads are independent, and it's meaningful to carry on in the event of one thread dying, then I don't see why you *couldn't* install a trap (SEGV) handler that would kill the current thread rather than exit the process, but this isn't usually done - these types of error are usually regarded as catastrophic and non-recoverable, so you exit.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I really haven't had any stability problems. In Windows, the memory problems aren't very large, 42MB. However, in OS X, I do currently see 460+MB with pretty much the same extensions running.

Just in case someone wants to call me on the memory use on OS X:
http://demaagd.com/gr/grabff.jpg - see the "Real Memory" column on the Firefox row.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Shacky]

I have 4GB of DDR400 in Dual Channel mode on my server boards here at the house..
Also have 14 extensions loaded (each time having to reload all of them on new builds)

I have to reload Firefox daily, as it typically gets over a 1gig footprint on the system.. Even when I close any/all firefox windows, I still have to kill the process.. It slows the system to a crawl when it gets up to 1gig..
They have still yet to fix this, telling people it's a "feature" - none of the settings tweaks on the forums help.. It doesn't look like they are actually going to fix the issue..

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[spyrochaete]

You must be a heck of a power surfer! I've never ever seen FF reach such a hefty memory footprint, and due to all the complaints similar to yours I've been sure to watch! I'm not saying you're making this up, but many of my friends are power users and none of them have had this trouble either.

Have you been updating FireFox since the pre 1.0 days? Maybe you need to do a teardown and reinstall.

One thing we do have in common is having to track down extensions that haven't been updated in time for a new release. Mozilla definitely had the right idea when they started distributing tiny patches instead of requiring a complete client download for every update, but it would have been nice if extension updates were awarded a similar upgrade.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Shacky]

Actually, the gig footprint can creep up while having as an example:
2 google personal homepages open (stocks, news, slashdot of course :))
and 1-2 windows open with 2-3 tabs in each..
It seems that any memory the Firefox asks the system for, just isn't released once used..
There was a program one of my coworkers used a few months back that tracked how much memory was used by certain processes each minute, and saved the info in nice graphs.. Firefox never went down, always went up..
In all fairness, I must point out that getting the gig footprint takes all day, sometimes into the next to get that high.
I'm thinking there is more than one issue with Firefox and the memory hole issue, because even with 4GB of ram, the system locks up (or takes 30 secs to allow any other screen to come up) after it only takes 1 gig out of the game.. Maybe Firefox becomes unstable after taking up a certain amt? I'm no programming guru, so I haven't a clue..

I've got two other boxes, those each have two gigs of ram in them (one AMD 3500+ one P4 3.4) and they have the same issues (although I've only seen them get to 4-500 megs before they get slow, and only once got to 800+ megs)
And as for making it up.. don't I wish :) - I'd rather be making it up, than experiencing it on a daily basis..

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[sootman]

I am aware that Firefox developers fix bugs all the time.

Sorry, I can't resist. This phrasing always makes me think of...

Facts:
1. Firefox developers are mammals.
2. Firefox developers code ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the Firefox developer is to fix bugs and kill people.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[LarsWestergren]

I once suggested a solution to their problems. The basic philosophy is that they want to fix the crashes. But at this rate, they never will, so it's better to find ways to limit the damage done by crashes. The best solution, IMHO, is to stop using threads. Instead, fork a separate process for each document and one more for the UI, and use IPC for them to communicate.

*First of all, as another poster already pointed out, this would require a massive rewrite.
*Second, on Linux forking processes and switching between them is basically as fast as using threads. This is not true for other operating systems and Firefox tries to be cross platform.
*Third (and now I'm on shakier ground, because I'm not an OS guru and know very little C), I believe using IPC has drawbacks on their own, and can become complex, especially on bigger applications - handling synchronization, security etc. I was browsing through an announcement for some sound handling project on Linux (ALSA, Jack?? Don't remember) and the developer was quitting development on this module because he had used communicating processes and had reached a dead end, and he didn't have time to rewrite it from scratch using threads, especially since there were existing open source projects who had already done it.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[mozkill]

ive never had stability problems with Firefox and I am a very tough browser user... I have had stability problems with Thunderbird but not in the last 6 months. Both are very stable on windows xp.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[spyrochaete]

I surf in spurts so my browser window is rarely open for more than 4 hours. Firefox should definitely accommodate both our surfing styles. I think many people might be persuaded to close their browser windows more often if Firefox didn't take so darn long to load. I recommend a memory-resident quick load agent in another comment on this topic.

By the way, do you have your Windows page files optimized for your huge memory pools? I support my 1.5GB of RAM with a 256MB page file on my C drive and a 512MB page file on my other SATA drive. A small page file must be kept on the system disk for stability purposes, and another small but not-too-small page file is best placed on a separate disk for the sake of speed. I made sure both of these page files have a static size, not a range, to ensure the disk space is always allocated and the page file is never fragmented.

Everybody loves unsolicited advice, right? :)

Good luck to us all for FireFox 2.5! Hopefully they'll finally throw in that new Gecko engine!

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[ben there...]

Firefox hasn't been that bad since I started using Opera for PhotoBucket and ImageShack and practically stopped using Myspace. Of course, if I still used Firefox for those sites/usage patterns the memory would grow out-of-control. But it's not bugging me at the moment.

One thing that does bug me is while using SageTV to record TV and Nero to burn it to DVDs, if I have TV.com on Firefox in the background, often Firefox gets up to 100% usage and threatens to corrupt my rips or burns. Firefox. The browser. The program that should be the least CPU intensive, just sitting there displaying Flash ads and some text, slows my computer to a crawl and almost halts the I/O! Craziness.

Another site to use Opera for until Mozilla finally fix the memory problems I guess.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[WuphonsReach]

My biggest beef with Firefox is that it still crashes frequently and has massive memory leaks that require me to quit and restart the browser on a daily basis. It doesn't take much to get Firefox to grow to 1GB in memory footprint and start causing my system to thrash. A fundamental flaw is that it does not release memory back to the OS, so when you close tabs and windows, the process doesn't shrink. While this isn't directly Firefox's fault, there are lots of ways around this that they refuse to implement. On the other hand, the true memory leaks ARE their fault.

1) config.trim_on_minimize = true

2) Install the leak monitor extension for a day and disable any extensions that it complains about. (Bugging the authors of those extensions is optional.)

3) browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers - Set this to something other then -1 (such as 2 or 4). With 1GB of RAM, this defaults to a larger value. (Mozilla's wiki has the details on what "-1" translates to for various RAM configurations.)

Firefox had a bad habit of eating up 350MB on my 1GB system. Now it's much better behaved (around 120MB) just by changing option #3 to a value of "2" instead of "-1". I've also disabled some of the extensions that the leak monitor extension complained about.

I haven't used suggestion #1 yet.

My biggest complaint is similar to yours, separate tabs should be separate threads rather then hanging all of the browser windows and tabs waiting on network activity. An implosion in one tab should only take out that tab (or worst-case that window).

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Anonymous Coward]

This points to a deficiency in your OS as well.

While most simple OSes do an OK job of divying up CPU time fairly, they often fail completely at managing I/O or paging activity. A single user process causing a lot of disk activity (by heavy paging I/O as it accesses many virtual pages, for example) can bring the system to a crawl, as you say, and there's nothing you can use to limit it.

What does <about:cache> report about your Firefox cache sizes?

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that some very useful features were discarded, I read "history cache" as different from the web page "memory cache" and "disk cache".

The history cache can be controlled by setting how many days of history you want retained (but not by size, as discussed here). The memory cache has a default limit determined by the total amount of RAM installed in your system but can be overridden in the <about:config> settings. The maximum size of the disk cache can be set in the browser preferences. See <about:cache> for current usage and limits.

The disk cache limit actually works, while the browser sometime ignores memory cache limits (a bug?).

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[belg4mit]

Mmmm, I see. I grabbed onto the cache part... I don't see the history threshold as
a cache, or for that matter likely to be much of a performance hit--I could be wrong--
compared to the page cache(s).

Indeed, but why you would offer a configurable hard limit for one, and not the other
is beyond me.

Re:Feature creep, leaving huge bugs unfixed

[Theovon]

An implosion in one tab should only take out that tab (or worst-case that window).

If you use threads, an implosion in one tab (thread) will still crash the whole process. Worse yet, runaway pointers will corrupt the address space of other threads, corrupting them and making them crash in places unrelated to the bug. As I said, the solution is to run each document in a separate PROCESS. The context switch overhead in Linux is the same, but now every document is protected, and one crash will not take down the whole browser.

Why doesn't it count?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

("it supports ActiveX" doesn't count)

Sorry, but yes it does, at least if you're a business user with a corporate intranet that uses ActiveX as many do. This stubborn attitude among the Moz community that ActiveX == bad, integration with Windows authentication == bad, etc. is exactly why Firefox has such low penetration on corporate desktops, which in turn is exactly why it's so rarely included with off-the-shelf PCs from big name vendors.

Seven deadly sins of successful software development, #5: Believing that what you think the users should have is more important than what the users actually want.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[spyrochaete]

ActiveX is a proprietary MS technology. MS won't let anyone else use it. I think the days of ActiveX are over due to MS's stubbornness. Intranets may use it, but companies with relatively open web browsing policies would be nuts not to force employees to use Firefox for everything but internal traffic. I run 2 anti-spyware programs about once a month and I haven't found a single piece of malware in YEARS since I switched to Firefox.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I like Firefox too, and use it at home.

Nevertheless, at work we are forced to use IE or miss out on functionality on the corporate intranet. One of my colleagues, also a Firefox fan, sent a mail to the admins asking them to tweak their site to support other browsers. They basically told him to get stuffed, IE is the corporate standard and that's all they care about.

Though it irritates me to say it, why shouldn't they say that? It is not the company's job to support personal web browsing preferences, and the use of company resources to browse the web at lunchtime or whatever is a perk, not a part of the job description. If IE/ActiveX/whatever is the corporate standard, and it works, then anyone else's browser had better be compatible with it or expect not to be adopted on the corporate desktop.

The same goes for using Thunderbird without Exchange connectivity, BTW.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[spyrochaete]

Companies can enforce whatever they want internally. My company, VERY oddly, wrote a custom app that only supports full functionality in Firefox. When you enforce one browser externally, however, potential customers will simply find a competitor's website that works with their browser.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[iBod]

>> would be nuts not to force employees to use Firefox for everything

Well, so much for the cornucopia of choice that free software offers! User must be FORCED to use application X for EVERYTHING.

Way to go buddy!

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[spyrochaete]

Corporations are not in the business of letting their employees do whatever they want with company property. In many countries it is perfectly legal for companies to log all activity on company-owned assets including computers, phones, supply cabinets, and even coffee machines.

But that wasn't really my point. My point was that IE is an open door for spyware and other malware which costs tons of money and man hours to remedy, plus it puts confidential corporate data at risk. Firefox puts a stop to 99.9% of this risk (via security through obscurity mostly).

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[iBod]

Yes, I know. My comment was made slightly tongue in cheek.

Much as I prefer FireFox, I don't think IE is quite so bad these days. Lessons have been learned - even at Redmond.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[Kelson]

This stubborn attitude among the Moz community that... integration with Windows authentication == bad

Mozilla has included NTLM authentication for years. Even non-Windows versions have supported it since November '03, a year before Firefox 1.0 shipped.

Admittedly, I haven't tested this since we don't have a windows-auth-based intranet, but assuming it works... is there some other aspect of Windows authentication that you're thinking of?

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, when I go to any sites on our corporate intranet using IE, it just loads them. Firefox invariably prompts me for username and password, and it does so for every different site on our intranet that requires authentication.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[DRM_is_Stupid]

Wasn't ActiveX the cause of IE not being very standards compliant and allowing lots of spyware to enter?

So standards and security do count because users don't want spyware controlling their PCs. IE's kinda funny cause it requires user authentication (username & password) just so that a site can use Direct X for alpha transparency, and there's no getting around using Active X to use alpha transparency in the browser.

Re:Why doesn't it count?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What you say makes perfect sense on the public Internet: ActiveX has indeed been a cause of security problems on more than one occasion. On an office intranet, however, where the only standard is whatever the company uses and the security is only as good as your corporate network's, those arguments are pretty much irrelevant.

extensions

[Lawrence_Bird]

why must firefox always break extensions?  I have yet to use one which did not
work with a new version of firefox yet have many times had to manually alter
files so that a new release of firefox would work with them (while waiting for
the extension writer to make any changes he deems necessary beyond updating
the version compatability).

Why can't firefox have a 'try it one time' feature similar to windows and screen
resolutions?  Let people use their extensions and if they crap out they can then
be disabled.

Re:extensions

[spyrochaete]

You get my pseudomod for insightful! I'd love to see this feature, though I'm not sure it could be trusted in the hands of anyone but power users. I wonder if it will keep on checking for updates to previously out-of-date extensions or if we'll have to download them again.

Re:extensions

[Mant]

I have yet to use one which did not work with a new version of firefox yet

I have, although it seems pretty rare, last time on the change to 1.5 which changed some menus.

many times had to manually alter files so that a new release of firefox would work with them

Try the MR Tech Local Install extension, you can override the version compatibility on other extensions and dispense with the file changes.

Re:extensions

[mfaras]

What you're looking for is already done. The extension "MR Tech Local Install" does that among other things.
When you install a new extension, and it's for an older version, it warns you and lets you bypass the warning.

You can donwload the extension here

--
Luckily there are others that had before the same needs we have now

Re:extensions

[Lawrence_Bird]

gracias!  but it would still be nice if this was built in!

Re:extensions

[Cylix]

Because sometimes things really don't work right!

Remember, they do seem to be appealing to the masses and enforcing strict version control probably makes life easier for the little guy.

If it can break, people will break it... kinda like if you build it, they will come.

That said, I've noticed some odd problems crop up between minor releases and my network profile. I really can't say for certain what blasted all of my data, but since then I've brought every system in software sync. (I create my own problems as my box tends to test things).

Anyhow, restore, relish and bask... unfortunately I don't even know if it was Firefox's fault because it's simpler to restore then actually sort out a one time problem for ONE user. (As a side note, I pay for more attention to the users needs then my own because I don't complain about my own junk being broken.)

Better cookie and JavaScript handling

[metamatic]

The current interface for setting cookie and JavaScript permissions is severely non-optimal.

What I want is something more like the pop-up blocking--it blocks cookies and JavaScript by default, and there's a button I can click to add a rule to allow cookies and JavaScript for particular domains.

Re:Better cookie and JavaScript handling

[grondu]

For JavaScript, use NoScript: http://www.noscript.net/whats

Re:Better cookie and JavaScript handling

[POWRSURG]

The NoScript extension covers this for JavaScript (and Java, Flash, more) at least.

Re:Better cookie and JavaScript handling

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail Cookie Button. Install from addons. I also prefer to complement it with Cookie Button in the status bar

Two Versions

[ZachPruckowski]

1) Firefox Plus - comes with extensions pre-bundled, like AdBlock, quicktime/WMP, whatever a basic user could use but might not have the guts (or forethought) to go get.

2) Firefox Basic - straight-up Firefox like we have now, add-your-own extensions, etc.

This way, Firefox can claim as features the pre-bundled extensions, and it compares better to IE when the user-installed packages are installed. Assume users won't maintain Firefox (by adding useful extensions), so allowing users to get all the extension features immediately after launch is good.

Re:Two Versions

[T3hFish]

Thats a good idea. People who are not very computer literate can just get the Firefox-Plus version which can have some good extensions while other people can choose exactly what they want to install.

New functionality and a marketing attack

[mattr]

New functionality

Give Firefox and other browsers
1) the ability to drag a number of files/folders onto a spot and facilitate transfer via method specified by the web page: one file at a time, all files in parallel up to X simultaneous uploads, or the whole shebang as a single tar file (filenames in UTF8 or MIME encoded). All those cool photo sites and people still have to upload one photo at a time, that's dumb.
2) Better support for ajax with some useful functions. a high speed xml parser, zip en/decoder, launch and manage multiple javascript threads, provide optionally encrypted local storage, network with other browsing people in realtime if user allows it, etc. Ability to JIT download and store various signed interpreters (python, perl, parrot, random gamer kernel, etc.) would be extremely neat, too.
3) Improved human-computer interaction (HCI) facility. For example there is a DOM selector somewhere in the debug menu or in the scrapbook which is a little useful for programmers, but most mortals (I'm still talking intelligent people, just not programmers) have no way to do simple things like point their finger at something on the screen to tell the computer or website to do something about it. A simple, highly useable way to point at predefined areas on the screen (in a web page and on the desktop), perhaps using a transparent overlay to help out, would be a vast improvement. None of this otaku gesture shit. Something every user can suddenly get a massive improvement out of.
4)While you're at it, support allowing individuals to specify a URI which holds persistent structured info they want to be able to get at. Like favorite links, addresses, whatever. Support a bunch of ways to get at the data including support for high speed encrypted search,retrieval,storage.There's lots of ways that Firefox could support the development of really useful services, just making it possible to do something not necessarily doing it all itself.
5)Allow a miniapp to run in the system tray and respond to events, write in javascript, or whatever. A clue could be taken from the openlaszlo/dojo work.. and note that the Flash security model is too secure while dojo.storage is looking for storage providers and Firefox needs to provide. I'm for making minimal additions that have maximum effect, no more eye candy that never gets used or brings most computers to their knees.

A marketing attack
There may be a way to use M$ tactics against them. Prepare Firefox code so that it can be easily branded and customized. Make a new version for every computer manufacturer and rename versions as Explorer. Every new computer could have a version of Firefox and the manufacturer might give it priority if say it includes a free user feedback ajax app, etc. Embrace and extend? You just want to make sure Microsoft doesn't willfully throw a wrench onto every desktop making it impossible for Firefox to deliver useful improvements to the user experience.

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[spyrochaete]

Prepare Firefox code so that it can be easily branded and customized.

I know you can change the URL of the "throbber" icon at the top-right by browsing about:config and changing the browser.throbber.url preference, so I'm sure that could be configured easily enough in an extension or alternate installer. Regardless of feasibility, this is a great idea and should be taken seriously!

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[The Cisco Kid]

As regards uploading multiple files, thats something that would need to be added to the 'cool photo site', no special browser support would really be needed. It would be trivial for a 'cool photo site' to accept uploads as tarballs or zip files.

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[DorkRawk]

1) the ability to drag a number of files/folders onto a spot and facilitate transfer via method specified by the web page: one file at a time, all files in parallel up to X simultaneous uploads, or the whole shebang as a single tar file (filenames in UTF8 or MIME encoded). All those cool photo sites and people still have to upload one photo at a time, that's dumb.

I believe Flock (http://www.flock.com/) has some features similar to this for certain sites.

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[kchrist]

Netscape had a customization application that did exactly this back in the '90s, and Microsoft still does. This was how ISPs and such were easily able to distribute their own branded browsers to their customers.

The market for stuff like this is much smaller now that ISPs aren't mailing out software CDs to their users anymore. Coporate networks, maybe, but IE is already solidly entrenched here. Still, if it could be done without using too many resources, it might be a good idea for the Mozilla group to get something like this out there.

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[mattr]

Thanks for your comment. Yes, of course. The point being that ordinary users don't know how to make a tar archive (also tar archived filenames can corrupt); a zip is even too hard for most. If the browser could accept a whole folder or selection of files at once and upload them in a batch, preferably resized to something useful, it would be a major change. Not kidding, I failed to explain dragging folders between windows to my sister. Most of the public do not in fact understand the metaphor of the desktop and what you ought to be able to do with it.

Re:New functionality and a marketing attack

[mattr]

Yes. I asked the openlaszlo project if such a thing could be done in firefox with javascript, just got silence. Flock capabilities in firefox would be good.

still no acid2 test

[Fortun L'Escrot]

new firefox still doesn't pass the acid2 test.

but i do like the built in spell check feature!

Re:still no acid2 test

[Goncyn]

There are no Gecko (rendering engine) changes in Firefox 2.0. It's based on the same version of Gecko that Firefox 1.5 was. Firefox 3.0 will be based on Gecko 1.9 and is expected to pass the ACID2 test.

Re:still no acid2 test

[Fortun L'Escrot]

thanks for reminding me. i keep forgetting that firefox is a ui frontend amd gecko is a rendering backend.

Here's a car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

My driveway isn't wide enough for a SUV, SUV makers should make all their vehicles 6" narrower or I'll keep riding my monocycle. Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

The solution is for these companies to recode their intranet apps so that they conform to industry standards instead of Microsoft standards. Why would anyone think otherwise?

Re:Here's a car analogy

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The problem with that is ego. The people that in the mid to late 90s that created the corperate activex website is still there. He got a promotion for doing it ontime and on budget. Now you're telling him he did it all wrong. Not only are you saying he was stupid, but his boss was stupid for rewarding him for doing it. Plus, right now with IE it "just works"( Translated it means that its horibbly buggy, but everyone already knows about the problems and how to work around them). They don't want to re do the system , disturb the status quo, and retrain everyone for the new app, just because its a better idea in the long run. But stick in there, soon you can claim that the ROI for the previous system was tremendos and further ROI could be achived with an update to standards based AJAX applications or what have you. Then you can change over after the new system is completed, just don't use the Firefox argument to change the application. The application allows firefox, not the other way around.

Hmm... Integrated spell checker huh?

Re:Here's a car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, sound like a man with experience working in this corporate environment. I would not have thought to take the patient zen approach to FF. That sounds like a much better option. My hat is off to you sir.

*learns lesson*

why no movable toolbars?

[mcn]

well, i am no programmer, but i find that the netscape/mozilla/firefox family doesn't have toolbars that are movable and allows me to rearrange to what i like. i need to stack 2 or more toolbars into a row, but i can't.... is this in the works for firefox 3?

Re:why no movable toolbars?

[The Cisco Kid]

Right-click over a blank area of the menu or toolbar, then select 'customize'.

Re:why no movable toolbars?

[spyrochaete]

Uh, yeah... hasn't this been a feature since 0.x?

Re:why no movable toolbars?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster is wanting to place 2+ toolbars onto one. Like having multiple bookmark bars on 1 row. I cant get firefox to do this if it can even be done. Some extensions let you do this like Googlebar lite.

Time for a Gecko rewrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many have suggested that it is time for a rewrite of Gecko. While the XUL+JavaScript architecture has proven to be of some use, the existing C++ codebase is in shambles, and badly needs to be rewritten.

Joel says that we shouldn't do rewrites, but sometimes a piece of software gets so ugly that a rewrite is the only viable alternative. Of course, when you do the rewrite you must make some changes in order to prevent a future relapse.

One such change could be an avoidance of C++. Some have suggested that OCaml might be a good language to use instead. Besides offering native compilation on a variety of platforms, it is very performant for a language with so many functional features. But nevertheless, it also offers imperative and object-oriented functionality. The automatic garbage collection may help with the memory-leak issues that Firefox has suffered so badly from. And its strong, static typing is sure to increase the quality of the code.

Mind you, it may take some time for the existing developers to learn OCaml, and transition over fully. But we've seen through the Pugs project, for instance, that non-mainstream languages can be used in successful open source projects. Pugs is written in Haskell.

Regardless, it may be time for the Mozilla project to move away from C++, onwards to new technologies. That's not to suggest Java or C# are the right answer, of course. They would likely suffer from many of the same problems that plagued the C++ development effort. A more radical change may be necessary, towards a language like OCaml that increases not only quality, but also programmer productivity.

Re:Time for a Gecko rewrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I think you should rewrite it in BASIC. When are you doing to start?

This ain't new.

[game kid]

I liked "2.0 Beta Candidate" better back when it was "Beta 2 Preview".

In both cases, people have said not to download, and wait for the real Beta--though for somewhat different reasons.

Firefox: "Unlike the real Beta 1 release, the RCs for it are only intended for internal use, and are not mirrored. Thus widespread distribution of these links stands a good chance of DDOSing the poor Mozilla servers, which are only hosting these for internal testing."

IE: That's why this is a preview for developer testing only. Never install betas of OS components (that includes beta previews) on a machine that you can't afford to rebuild.

Spellbound?

[cascadingstylesheet]

>The Spellbound extension already does this for Firefox.

Well, did it move or something?

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

This hasn't worked with current versions of Firefox for awhile, and I really miss it :(

Re:Spellbound?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a developer build and it should work fine with FF 1.5.x:

http://exchangecode.com/spellbound/downloads/spell bound-dev_20060108.xpi

Re:Spellbound?

[elrous0]

I used the developer build 0.9.8

It's much better than the last version on the old website.

-Eric

Re:Spellbound?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Where are you guys finding these? The AC's link is broken, and I'm not finding developer builds on the SourceForge site.

Are you an Apache1.x developer?

[cyfer2000]

I can smell the old faithful Apache1.X smell, mm..., sweet. To be honest, I don't like your proposal too.

Uh, WRONG

[octaene]

Sorry, submitter. You've shared with us a link to RC3, not Beta 1. Beta 1 is in fact not released at this point. Note that 2 of the 3 release candidates were posted within the last 24 hours. That ain't the same as Beta 1 being available.

When (and if) Beta 1 is released today, it'll be here:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/bonecho/

Build your own

[obender]

Betas and RCs are for Digg, this is Slashdot.

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.or g:/cvsroot co mozilla/client.mk
cd mozilla
make -f client.mk checkout MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser

now make a file .mozconfig (tweak the settings to fit your system):

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
export MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1
export BUILD_OFFICIAL=1
mk_add_options MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1
mk_add_options BUILD_OFFICIAL=1
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/firefox-bin

ac_add_optio ns --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2
ac_add_options --with-user-appdir=.mozilla
ac_add_options --with-system-png=/usr
ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg=/usr
ac_add_options --enable-postscript
ac_add_options --disable-installer
ac_add_options --disable-xprint
ac_add_options --enable-crypto
ac_add_options --enable-strip-libs
ac_add_options --enable-canvas
ac_add_options --enable-svg
ac_add_options --enable-mathml
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-gtktest
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-xft
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-O3 -march=opteron -mtune=opteron -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer"
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib=/usr
ac_add_options --without-system-nspr
ac_add_options --enable-xinerama
ac_add_options --enable-extensions=default
ac_add_options --disable-pedantic
ac_add_options --disable-long-long-warning
ac_add_options --enable-single-profile
ac_add_options --disable-profilesharing
ac_add_options --enable-gnomevfs
ac_add_options --disable-updater

compile:

make -f client.mk build

The result of the build will be in mozilla/firefox-bin/dist/bin. use cp -rL to resolve the links when you copy it to some other place.

You can also put all this in a script and run it with crontab.

Re:Build your own

[TeknoHog]

You can also get the latest bleeding edge build of Minefield, which is the alpha for Firefox 3.0. For practical use I find Bon Echo much more stable, but for example Acid2 is better in Minefield.

Feature creep

[WebHostingGuy]

Features are not bad so long as you have the option to load them or not load them. Personally, I have no use for spelling checking (or feature x) in a browser. But if I wanted it, it should be easy just to download and install the module and then just as easy to unload when I am through with it.

Re:Feature creep

[Anonymous Coward]

No, your spelling is ok, but your grammar could use work.

Re:Feature creep

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather not have to download a feature like a spell checker when I wanted to use it, but it would be nice if the browser could dynamically load/unload the feature on demand.

I keep my browser open for long periods of time doing different things and it's silly to have a "load once, keep forever" attitude toward functionality that might only be used on a single website/once every other day/whatever. Imagine if your OS never unloaded any programs until you rebooted!

Spellbound extension

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this site for fixes that allow Spellbound to work on the current version of Firefox.

In other news,

[GeekDork]

Still no inline-block, and broken XMLHttpRequest. (Bugzilla links, so block those referrers.)

NTLM to a domain?

[Screwy1138]

Does Firefox have the ability to do NTML authentication to a domain? I can currently do it by listing out each and every web host, but I can't just say do it to *.mybiz.net addresses. This is problematic because we have a lot of hosts on *.mybiz.net

To be able to define domains and set up security preferences for those domains is the #1 thing preventing our organization from taking Firefox more seriously.

I admit I haven't had time to investigate this since earlier versions.

Re:NTLM to a domain?

[higuita]

you already can add *.domain

check http://www.crossedconnections.org/w/?p=89

Re:NTLM to a domain?

[Screwy1138]

thank you, this is more information than what I had. However, it still doesn't work in one scenario, a scenario that does work in IE and is common to users.

I put .mycompany.net in the config.

If the user goes to myhost1.mycompany.net, myhost2.mycompany.net, it works just fine. However, users are very accustomed to going just to http://myhost1/ or http://myhost2/ which does not work, at least doesn't work with the solution in the article you posted.

Don't get me wrong, the article was good help and I will use that. But it's still missing a key capability.

Thanks for the info!

Re:Simply a re-sizable search box...

[Glasswire]

Does anyone know why Firefox 1.x, despite having a fairly configurable interface, requires you to have an active extension just to make the Google search field larger?
(I know there's ways you can edit the user file to change this, but this is a pain and on many of the machines have to use, I haven't bothered. Why should this be so difficult??)
Was this some kind of deal with Google, which G wanted users to go to a generic Google page if they wanted to enter (and SEE) more than 15 characters or so of search text?
Drives me crazy - hope 2.0 fixes this...

Couldn't agree less

[smittyoneeach]

Your argument would mean that a Mazda RX8 is zippier than a BMW Z4, just based on the highest integer value in the product name.

While the dumb-as-a-post users you refer to certainly exist, they are not in any majority.

Mod Parent UP

[Hatta]

Attachable and detachable tabs would be so insanely useful. This is such a natural extension of the tab concept I can't imagine why it hasn't been implemented yet.

Re:Mod Parent UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patent owned by adobe.

MEMORY USAGE OMG!

[seek31337]

Do any of you even know how memory usage works? Comments like "It's using 42mb just to display this page! IE is using 22." amuse me. Hello, memory caching. Is this page theonly one you've looked at before you loaded firefox?

And where's the memory leak? I've been running my browser for 3 days, with gmail, and I'm not swapping memory yet. I only have 512mb on this machine. If it's a real memory leak, and not managed memory caching, then I will eventually hit swap, no? Please let me know how long I can expect for that to happen.

Memory is extremely fast, so the fact that an app is taking up a whole 42mb of memory doesn't mean it's going to be slower than an app using 12mb. Memory usage is not an indicator of performance, or bloat. It's simply what the application has allocated. Also, with IE, there's parts of it integrated into the OS, if I recall correctly, so there's hidden memory usage you're missing.

Look at how much paging the app is doing while it's operating. Run vmstat when running IE vs. Firefox and report those numbers. Wait, you can't do that.

Never mind. Remain ignorant and opinionated.

Who would need a spellchecker?

[tetabiate]

there are more than enough grammar nazis here on slashdot willing to do the best they can to help you.

Using a gig of RAM?

[Kelson]

It doesn't take much to get Firefox to grow to 1GB in memory footprint and start causing my system to thrash.

At first I couldn't imagine what could possibly make Firefox use 1 GB of memory, but then I realized that's probably the average size of a typical MySpace page...

Better printing features

[springbox]

Some advanced printing features would be nice. I know some people are already aware of this problem, but it would be nice if you could print pages as they're displayed. Sometimes there are noticable rendering errors in the print preview that do not appear when actually viewing some pages. Also, a print cropping feature would be extremely useful.

spell checker

[treak007]

I wonder how the spell checker will work. Hopefully it won't be an autocorrect system. Could you imagine trying to enter a user name and password to a site, and firefox keeps autocorrecting your username and password to similar words? But I think that a regular spell checker would be a really cool feature to add to firefox, especially with so many people posting on web forums. Now you don't have to actually know how to spell, all you need is for Firefox to know how to spell.

Link to developer version

[elrous0]

I got it from here (scroll down in the first post and click on the "Install SpellBound Dev" link.

-Eric

Re:Link to developer version

[cascadingstylesheet]

>I got it from here (scroll down in the first post and click on the "Install
>SpellBound Dev" link.

Cool; thanks!

Does it work properly over ssh yet?

[Trogre]

With current mozilla/firefox builds if you SSH into a remote machine with X11 forwarding and invoke Firefox, a new LOCAL session starts up. Utterly useless for testing clients web browsers.

Spell checker = bloat

[koreth]

Hey, Firefox developers: I can spell just fine on my own, thanks. I don't need my Web browser chewing (even more) memory just so it can incorrectly flag the technical terms and proper names I enter into Web forms.

I agree with other posters. This should have remained an extension. Avoiding this kind of bloat is why Firefox forked from the Mozilla Suite in the first place. If you need spell checking, great, install it. But don't force it down the throats of people who have no use for it.

bitTorrent distribution would be much better

[Falcon040]

It would be best if the linked to a torrent of Firefox Beta, then it wouldn't go down heavily on the servers.

Why is it still not standard to torrent the file? Any extra users would/should help to increase the ease of download for the incoming downloaders.

BitTorrent it!

Re:Simply a re-sizable search box...

[pile0nades]

You don't need an extension for that; in userChrome.css add this code, changing the number if you want: /* resize search bar */
#searchbar {
    width: 300px !important;
}

Re:Simply a re-sizable search box...

[pile0nades]

Oops sorry, didn't read whole post.

Maybe if they fix those stupid bugs

[Myria]

There are two very annoying bugs that have been around and known since "1.0.0" that still have not been fixed:

- Many times, when you copy and paste from Firefox, the clipboard gets cleared and nothing gets copied into it. Once this happens, not cutting and pasting for you until you restart Firefox.

- If a DNS query does not respond immediately, Firefox will hang until it does. Ever heard of CreateThread and pthread_create? Or ADNS for that matter?

If the source were not so insanely complicated and difficult to build, I'd fix these myself. I work with malware that's easier to reverse engineer than Firefox's source.

Melissa

Beta 1 released

[Octopuz]

Beta 1 is now in the releases tree, as of today: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/2.0b1/

The new close buttons on the tabs SUCK SUCK SUCK

[Pvt_Waldo]

I keep going to click on a tab to activate it and I close it by mistake - losing that tab and how ever the hell I got there.

And I keep going over to click the red X on the right hand side to close my active tab - and instead I just close what ever tab is on the right.

This imo is bad, bad, bad user interface design. Surely I can't be the only person who has gotten mixed up by the new design and closed tabs by accident?

Re:The new close buttons on the tabs SUCK SUCK SUC

[Anonymous Coward]

bet you can get rid of them with userChrome.css

Mozilla firefox now officially with broken tabs!

[pugdk]

OK, one of the things I've always loved about the tabs in firefox was changed!

Normally in Firefox, in order to close tabs you have to click the red cross at the far right, where this STAYS no matter how many tabs you have.

Now in beta 2.0 this have changed. The closing cross is now located in EVERY damn tab, meaning that if I want to close a bunch of tabs I now have to MOVE the mouse for each one! WTF! Talk about lack of usability. This is exactly the same lameness seen in Konquror and Opera and one of the main reasons I do NOT use these browsers but prefer Firefox.

Give me my right side closing cross back! NOW!

*GRRRR*

-pug