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Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review. It is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel. DesktopLinux.com has posted a list of the changes along with a few quick screen grabs. Apparently, the download can be found on Mozilla's ftp site."
Can this version happily co-exist with my existing Firefox 1.5 installation without screwing everything up? I'm eager to try out FF 2.0, but not if it causes problems with the version I have installed already.
Isn't Clint Eastwood a bit old to be doing this stuff?
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
For those of you that want to test this out without installing it, consider a portable version of Firefox 2 Beta 2.
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/08/31/download-t he-portable-version-of-firefox-2-beta-2/
FireFox, 2B or not 2B.
"toolbar buttons now glow when you hover over them."
FINALLY!
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
I used Firefox 2.0 beta 1 and ended up getting really pissed off. The thing crashed several times a day, I submitted a bug report every time. Went back to 1.5, and happily sailing along again. Firefox hasn't crashed since I went back to the last non beta.
...but 1.5 turned me off to Mozilla. Konqueror loads a lot faster, and uses less memory.
Palm trees and 8
Looks like Firefox drank the coolaid and opted for the tab closing button on each tab, thus presenting a moving target for closing tabs. I hope they make single button an option a least.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
New Firefox 2 feature: Inline spell checking -- A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms.
But will this detect antiquated Elglish, such as when people use "ask" instead of "ax"?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
it breaks all your favourite extensions again (yes even the ones that have been working for so long that the original developer has long gone)
im getting pretty tired of forced obselence on MS platforms
maybe Linux can help...oh wait
Too bad the Firefox project has gotten to the point where "testing" essentially means "check out all the new bugs that won't be fixed until Firefox 4.0". I'll wait for IE7.
Click on the close button of the leftmost tab you want to delete. Keep clicking.
Shazam, man. Shazam.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I hadn't heard that Firefox was switching to NSIS.
Was the old installer Mozilla-specific code?
Either way, the switch sounds like a good idea. The old installer had its issues, and focusing on the browser and improving an existing (and already quite reasonable) installer is a great idea.
Anyway, Opera has most of these "new" features, and consumes fewer resources. I switched, and haven't looked back.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Reading over the new features mentioned and looking over the screenshots, it looks like Firefox is starting to look like Opera. The interesting thing is that Firefox started of with the concept of having a completely minimal browser where the extensions are used to customize it to the user. However, now it just seems like their copying the concepts that a bunch of popular extensions introduced (or copied from other browsers like Opera) and incorporating them into the core because they want to either improve their performance or manage the memory leaks or whatnot that 3rd party extensions cause.
On some level, it's nice, but the one thing I prefer about extensions is that their feature/fix rate is fairly more frequent than Firefox's. It will be interesting to see where Firefox is 5 years from now.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Will firefox 2 feature better canvas support? Canvas is this great new tag in WhatWG's html spec that manages to mix content, presentation and scripting. It's taken years to fix html and seperate content and presentation, now the browser vendors are taking a giant leap backwards by rushing to support this modern blink tag. Why would I want firefox 2, is it a step forwards or are we returning to the stupidity of the browser wars?
Not released, don't slashdot their FTP server. Download it from here when it updates.
am I the only one who thinks that cookie management blows in firefox? I mean, it's certainly worse in IE, but it's far from great and I haven't seen any enhancements to it in any recent versions (though I may just be blind or crazy, though not too likely) - sometimes, you go to a site for the first time and I've got FF set to prompt on cookies, so I say "hell no I don't want a cookie" then the site says "sorry, bro, this site doesn't work without cookies" so then I have to go digging around the block/allow list for cookies to try to find the right one so I can remove it from the blocked list so I can try to get into the page. considering that most of the people that use firefox are probably nerds and probably aware of things like cookies and probably are more likely to do things about them (like selectively allowing them) it is suprising to me that cookie management is so difficult inside this application - does anyone else agree?
calling all destroyers
Buy me a laptop computer whose built-in pointing device includes a middle button and I'll consider it.
Instead of ftp.mozilla.org, try the mirror page – currently it seems to list beta 1, but you should be able to modify the download URL to get the en-US beta 2.
One small area that has had a reasonable amount of improvement in Firefox 2 is canvas support – I've been working on a canvas-based FPS engine and get about 50% better performance in FF2 than in FF1.5, as well as lots of fixed bugs and memory leaks.
Most major changes (like the new graphics infrastructure that'll help provide hardware accelerated rendering, full-page zooming, HTML inside SVG, better printing, etc) are being left for Firefox 3, but FF2 seems like a solid improvement over the previous version.
The canvas is actually a nice example of progress on the web. After too many years with very little going on, the major modern browsers developers (Mozilla, Opera, Apple) are working in the WHATWG to add new features – it's a balance between proprietary extensions and W3C-style specifications, with browsers implementing features at the same time as the spec is being written and guiding its development. There's room for competition between browsers in terms of feature support, and we don't have to wait years for the standards to be completed first – but it's hopefully without the old problems of those features being proprietary and poorly designed. For example, Opera 9 supports much of Web Forms 2.0 and the Mozilla developers are just starting work on it too; and it's also designed to be backward-compatible, so the new forms are still usable in all browsers and can be emulated in some (e.g. IE) with JavaScript. Firefox 2 seems to be the first browser with client-side session and persistent storage, but web sites written to benefit from that feature will be able to immediately work with future versions of e.g. Opera that support it too.
With the popularity of trends like AJAX encouraging people to think about new ways to interact with users over the web, and browsers adding features to expand the possibilities open to web developers, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.
Really...THESE kind of "features" are considered a major version upgrade?
I repeat...
YAWN!!!
Why can't a god damned browser do what it is supposed to? JUST FUCKING BROWSE???
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Even better, there is now a separate little red 'X' button for each browser tab just like Internet Exploder 7. And Firefox successfully imported my cookies from Internet Explorer. Pretty slick! Don't you love leapfrog?
Please use the mirror infrastructure, not the direct link to the FTP site. You can get your builds easily at:
h tml
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-beta.
as soon as they are officially relased (which should be in a few minutes!)
Been using today and it seems more responsive than Beta 1 and after a day a bit more reliable. Quick look seems to indicate that it uses less memory. Lots of add ins won't work with this and we should (hopefully) see a bunch of updates soon so that we can get our favorite add ins back!
The new tabs look nicer. I hate the "go" button and haven't figured how to turn it off, but I'm sure someone will create a theme without it.
This is Microsoft-style "innovation" folks.
Here's another idiotic comment: Opera is better, it's already version 9 (and no, I don't use FF either, but spending 20 seconds on writing "I don't use it, I don't give a damn" wouldn't even cross my mind). I thought first posts are moderated somehow (in a "lame, moved down" way).
Yes, but where will they find snakes that think in Russian?
We have not yet released Firefox 2 Beta 2. This story is incorrect.
- Asa
It's not public yet. When it is ready to be released they'll have it mirrored across many servers. Announcing it early like this causes an effective DDOS on the mozilla server.
All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
I hope they finally support CDATA. Anybody know for sure? Until they do, I'll have to stick with Opera.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
But does it work with Windows?
Built-Phishing Protection:
WARNING:
The man you are about to converse with is not really a high ranking General in the Nigerian army, he does not really have a rich uncle who died tragically in a plane crash in Siberia, and he absolutely DOES NOT have $53.4 million dollars to smuggle out of Nigeria for his uncle's poor orphaned children. You will not get 30%. Trust us.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?
+----+ +--------+
| OK | | CANCEL |
+----+ +--------+
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Is it just me, or it feels MUCH faster than 1.5. Did they tweak things to improve speed?
I wonder if there's something special about Firefox that makes people confuse "a file with that name exists on the primary FTP site" with "it's released." I've seen it happen with several Firefox releases, but I can't think of anything else where people have so consistently jumped the gun.
Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid and counter-productive idea? When was the last time you (the population of
I like the idea of having more tabs than window space, but fer cryin' out loud, two scroll buttons are not the way to handle it. How about multiple rows of tabs? Or right click + drag to scroll back and forth? Or a drop down menu of tabs?
I thought we all agreed that Flash applications that break scrolling are a Bad Thing (tm).
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Excellent. I tried 1.5 in beta, I might try this version out too.
But do they have official 64 bit support yet?
There are a few bug reports about Firefox not interpreting CDATA correctly, but they are not confirmed. If you see a bug in Firefox, you should probably go directly to the bug database and make sure all the information about the problem is noted there if you want it to be fixed.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
3TO.
Have they done anything to fix performance on linux builds?
It's sad watching FF on a dual boot system run significantly slower under linux than under window on the same machine. Especially when other linux applications fly.
And it's not even just DNS lookups. Simply switching tabs can take up to a second (?!) under linux whereas under windows it's 0.2 seconds (the perceived direct interaction threshold for most people).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I've been using Firefox 2.0 daily builds and Thunderbird 2.0 alpha along side the stable versions for quite some time using PortableApps.com. They are an entirely self-contained directory separate from your regular install.You can even run PortableFirefox from a CD so make sure to turn on the disk cache, otherwise performance is slow.
Firefox's auto incremental updates work great, plus it remembers your tabs so after the restart I'm right where I left off. I'm enjoying the built-in spell check--right now in fact. Firefox's reopen recently closed tabs feature on the renamed History menu is a life saver. I just accidentally closed this tab after checking that my links worked and Firefox brought it back complete will all form information. Google Suggest in the search box rocks.
The RSS feed summary page is cool and has support for Simple List Extensions. Check out a sample here: Jeff Bezos's Wish List. The ability to subscribe using your chosen feed reader is nice.
The tab bar is interesting. It changed to a grey gradient from a lighter, whiter washed out look a few builds ago. The grey doesn't match well with the Windows XP light tan gradient toolbars and the overflow arrow on the side of the tab bar are too faint to be noticeable. The list all tabs drop down on the right side is great though. I guess Mozilla has reached their goal of making the active tab better distinguished.
Generally, it seems to me that memory usage is lower than 1.5, even with 4 windows with 10+ tabs each. :-)
I'm lovin' it!
Host localhost (127.0.0.1) appears to be up
It's nice to see IE copying Firefox's plugins.
These features seem familiar somehow.... Could it be because Opera has had them for ages??? Worst. Release. Ever.
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
... where's the multithreaded UI?! Gah.
(Yes, 'Gah.' I went there.)
The new beta has search suggestions for google. Press Ctrl-K and enter some characters. Suggestions will appear. Enter sla and slashdot will be suggested, together with slavery and slackware.
However, enter sex, and nothing more will be suggested. Enter the f-word : equally silent. Enter the f-word, although in swedish, and see a long list of suggestions.
Warning: Rant coming on.
And if you want to feel incoherent rage, type "Alt-F(file-menu),C(close tab)" for a year and then go to Wikipedia and try to close the page. Oops. You can't, because some dumb fuck decided it should mean "Find" in wikipedia.
Whatever pigfucker decided that a fucking web page should be able to override an application's ability to use a key such as Alt-F should be gutted like a fish and have his entrails wrapped around a pickle fork and shoved down his throat.
And when he gets to my website, he will, because my CSS thinks that "F" stands for "fishyfork".
Yes but can this set fire to the internet community and out fox IE??? that my friend is the question,
Here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/
"Congratulations! You've downloaded or compiled a copy of Firefox 2 Beta 2. This means that you've volunteered to become part of the testing community. Helping out won't take much of your time, doesn't require special skills, and will help make the next version of Firefox even better.
Note: The Firefox 2 Beta 2 build you are using is NOT A FINAL VERSION of Firefox, it has been made available for testing purposes only, with no end-user support. If that sounds scary, you'd probably be better off with the latest version of Firefox that you can download here: http://www.getfirefox.com/"
Where can I download "reasonable" for Microsoft Windows? Which middle-button emulator do you recommend?
Can we have less features and just bug-fixes? I mean, the reason I used Firefox in the first place was because it was tiny. Don't go making it into Netscape again..
I'm using Win XP with the Windows Classic theme (rather than XP one), and Firefox 1.5 looks as beautiful as ever, but Firefox 2b2 looks horrible. It looks good on the XP theme, but a *lot* of work should be done for the classic one.
See it for yourself:
1.5
2b2
Even the new icons look ugly using Window's classic theme.
What's with this bug in mozilla, since getting gcc and vacpp to coexist in the first place will break things despite the best care taken to avoid it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I still haven't seen anything that qualifies as a major release (2.0) in my books. Granted, I see few things missing in Firefox that I can't add with extensions (and the core should be kept fairly clean, in my opinion). My guess is, Mozilla wants to have a higher version number. Because, as we all know, a higher version number means a better product...so I guess I'll be switching to Opera 9. :)
I am dissapointed that they made a move towards the 'feature' from Opera I hate the most, the interface is ugly, it is a shame cause the one in the alpha version was excellent. I just cannot understand this change. I hope I can change this easily.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Does it still have the 100% CPU utilization FEATURE that 1.5 has? I'd hate to lose the thrill of my system turning into a seized engine in quicksand... or the thrill of my less-computer-literate friends and relatives calling me for help on unfreezing their systems...
If it works with FC5, and I dont get the bs errors cant connect to server, blah blah, then Im all okay for trying it out, its a pain to swap browsers after being with one for so long.
Amsterdam?
The new UI will lead to accidental tab closing. If you left click and are off a few pixels (particularly when lots of tabs are visible), you'll accidentally close the tab. Even if this happens rarely, it will be infuriating when it does happen.
All so users don't have to learn the middle click idiom? What the hell is UI design coming to?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
i hope WMV is intergrated for us linux users i am tired of going through,well heck just trying to watch a simple video.I really wish those microsoft BAS****s would give us an plugin as a trade off for mozilla in vista.
If it's "developer only", it's an alpha release. If it's a "beta release" of an end user application, the term implies that it's for end users.
Would be a nice privacy boost.
It would lessen the need to save history for sites that I currently don't want to bookmark for privacy reasons. I could include history in "Clear Private Data".
I hope Page Zoom makes it into the FF2 feature set.
I still use FireFox every day on my PC, but Opera and IE7 has a a REAL page Zoom (not just simple text-resize like FF).
Page Zoom is important on larger-screen hi-res displays. Opera 9.01 is really usable on a 42" display, from 5 feet away, running at 1920x1080 (HTPC setup). FireFox would only be usable if I keep changing the resolution to a much lower res.
The real problem of course is Windows and Linux don't have solid, consistent and well-supported methods for adapting to displays that aren't 72dpi. The OS doesn't know how to scale the UI to different DPIs, as you expect a printer to do. When you change resolution, things should simply be *sharper* but the same size (well, not always the same size or the resolution can be wasted, but you know what I mean).
I realize I'm trivializing the problems in the technology. Until it's fixed, multimedia apps (including browsers) can hack around the problem by offering scaling mechanisms. WinAMP does it. Opera's 200% zoom rocks.
But really, is the browser so important anymore now that there is competition? It's pretty amazing how much better IE7 is than the older versions (and I am a web UI developer who hated IE). Not perfect, but lots better. It's really a crime though if you think how Microsoft abused their market share from 1999-2006 and basically did NOTHING with CSS and standards. I'm convinced if MS remained competitive during that time, the web would be far better a place today, technology-wise.
No need.
Snakes that think in Soviet Russian find YOU!
(And I can't believe I just stooped so low as to make that joke...)
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Well, call me classic, but I find the old theme pleasing to the eye. The Windows XP theme is not bad, but it is more space consuming. Anyway, I don't expect the Firefox team to do miracles, but at least it should look consistent: the tabs in Firefox 2b2 running on the old theme look copy-pasted from the new theme. Cheers.