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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!
...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.
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."
A beta was unstable and not ready for daily use? That's umpossible!
Seriously, beta 1 was unstable for me as well until I realized that it was because of a couple extensions that I had installed with the nightly tester tool that were crashing it. Since I removed those I haven't had any trouble with beta 1.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Uh... ya. Duh.
I really hope you're not actually surprised by this. Any update to Firefox ever has broken a few extensions (or all of them). Give the developers of those extensions a little time why don't you? It's still a beta anyways.
And if you're still using one that there isn't a developer for anymore... well... too bad I guess. You don't HAVE to update.
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.
You must have incredible lung capacity. If I'd held my breath waiting for Internet Explorer 7 I'd have been dead for just over five years now.
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!!
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
Awww yes, by-passing the version protection preventing it from doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
I have found I need far fewer extensions as FF defaults now act the way I want, so I no longer need an extension to fix the behavior.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I run Firefox on WinXP & Fedora Core 5:
... (The linux distro at 1.5.0.4 was recently updated also ).
FWIIW, my firefox 1.5.0.4 still crashes in updated Fedora Core 5 OS everytime that I load it up with a few too many tabs or whenever it feels like it ( i.e. If I do something like interrupt an operation such as stopping a heavilyladen pdf from displaying.
BTW, I don't have this issue in WinXP using 1.5.0.6
Buy me a laptop computer whose built-in pointing device includes a middle button and I'll consider it.
IE7 Beta is already out. And most people don't need to hold their breath to wait for something, they just wait patiently because they don't care so much.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
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.
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.
"there is now a separate little red 'X' button for each browser tab"
This is a mistake usability wise. The previous system of having a close button on the far right of the tab row was much easier to use as it does not move as tabs are added and removed. I wish these people would read some books on usability!
You must have missed where I said "Internet Explorer 7," as opposed to "the beta of Internet Explorer 7."
Yes, but where will they find snakes that think in Russian?
I want to close a tab that is currently in the background. Previously I could not do this. Now I can. Seems the new feature enhances usability, no?
I suppose if you're closing lots of tabs, in exactly the order in which they currently appear, then the old functionality is more usable, since you just have to keep clicking a stationary button. But is this a common use case? I would think it's more common to want to close a single tab (foreground or background) or close all tabs. The new functionality enhances the former and doesn't change the latter.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
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.
That's what "ctrl-w" is for.
I'd like having the mouse widget close to the object I'm manipulating, thank you.
I am still using firefox 2 alpha (Bon Echo) Should try later, but this one (bon echo) has to be the most stable firefox version ever. Even the exploit that worked on 1.5.0.6 didn't work here.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
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.
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?
+----+ +--------+
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+----+ +--------+
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
You can install Tab Mix Plus for FF 1.5 and have it give you close buttons on each tab. Actually, I have it set up so "Middle click on tab" closes the tab. That way you get the even better functionality than the red X (since you can position the mouse anywhere on the tab and middle click), and you don't have red X's cluttering up your tab bar. But anyway, this is right now in FF 1.5.
Actually, i think any close button is a mistake usability wise, as I find it leads to some accidentally closed windows. I prefer the middle-click to close tabs... Funny how most people don't know about that.
Is it just me, or it feels MUCH faster than 1.5. Did they tweak things to improve speed?
Actually, you have always been able to close a background tab; just do a middle click with your scroll wheel on the tab.
liqbase
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.
Actually, every other released browser has moved to using a close box for each tab, and it's generally considered the superior interface. I find it jarring when I switch to a browser still using one close box off in the far right. If you want to quickly close tabs, use Ctrl/Cmd-W.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Theory is great, but experimental evidence (if gathered properly) trumps it every time. In this case, they did a usability study and found that many people were better able to deal with the close button on the tab.
Personally, I find it annoying, and prefer the old behavior. But it's also surprisingly easy to get used to after you use it for a while.
Regards,
Ross
Well, the other guy was talking about the Beta version, so... And look at this article's title :P Anyway, stupid argument.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
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.
Maybe he's a Mac user, and still hasn't found the second button...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's a roughly similar situation to <img> and <object> – you lose out on accessibility and on the ability to work in the widest possible range of browsers, but there are sensible fallbacks so you can provide an alternative implementation for those who can't see it. If a web developer doesn't want to provide an alternative implementation, then it's no worse than if they used Flash or AJAX or image maps or table layouts or 7pt font sizes and didn't care about everyone who couldn't see it properly. For those who do care about separating content and presentation, it's not much worse than img – all you need is <canvas id="dynamic_interactive_graph"><img src="static_graph_fallback.png" alt="Graph of global warming increasing as number of pirates decreases"></canvas> with the canvas scripting code split into a separate file in the same way that the static image data is split into a separate file.
Given that the canvas tag is already supported in three browsers (who agreed it was worth implementing) and has a written specification, it's a sign of much more cooperation than existed in the time of Netscape vs Microsoft.
My GF couldn't find the 1st button the other day, she thought the buttons were the gripper ones on the side.
After the light came on she still didn't like it.
liqbase
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
CTRL-F4 - problem solved.
Beware of the Leopard.
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
Well, Firefox used to have a close buton on every tab, but made some usability studies and found that harmfull. Now it has only the far right buton... Now they did usability studies again and found just the oposite?
There is probably something wrong with that. It is possible that the facts changed (they do, over time), but it is not that likely. That makes me very suspicious about that "if gathered properly" stuff...
Personaly, I think that the buton on each tab is dangerous. I already lost a lot of pages because of it (but it does make browsing faster). Now, if FF will come with the unclose tab function, there is no problem with it.
Rethinking email
The close button at the end is great for closing lots at once - the individual ones are, to me, easier for closing the individual tabs.
"is this a common use case? "
It is for me. Often I'll find an interesting page with lots of links and open many of those links in seperate tabs. When I'm done I'll want to close all the tabs and return to the original page (a bit like pushing and popping items off a stack). The current system works perfectly for this.
These features seem familiar somehow.... Could it be because Opera has had them for ages??? Worst. Release. Ever.
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
Just because other broswers do it that doesn't automatically make it better!
... where's the multithreaded UI?! Gah.
(Yes, 'Gah.' I went there.)
I do worry that we're targeting unsophistcated users at the expense of the smart ones. The GNOME project has managed to dumb itself down far too much and I worry that Firefox is doing the same... :(
You're kidding.
I have had two long-standing really annoying bugs in FF 1.x that I think were solved in 2.0b1.
On Linux, when you have the browser open and use it extensively for several days on end without closing it, eventually it wacks out: When you click a link it will open it in a new window, but not a "normal" browser window -- the tab where it should be is still in the main window, and the new window doesn't have any FF controls, but is otherwise functional. The tab in the main window doesn't respond, but you can still access other tabs. When you close the new window, Firefox immediately crashes.
I've been running 2.0b1 for a couple weeks, and have not had that bug. It has *never* crashed. However, my electricity did go out a couple times, so I'm not 100% sure I had the browser open long enough to trigger the bug, but I *think* I did.
Also on one forum I use, there's a little animated happy-jumpy smiley. After a couple days of being open, FF1 stopped animating it. (I know, boo hoo.) So far, FF2 has not done that.
So, I'm pretty happy about FF2, even in the beta1 stage. I can honestly say that for me it has been significantly *more* stable than prior "stable" versions.
Funny how most people don't know about that.
Only on Windows does that work. On Linux you have to add tabbrowser preferences so you can have that functionality. On Linux it normally reloads the page.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I thought grandfathers were "he"s. (And we all know the alternative on Slashdot is a logical impossibility, and would cause the world to be destroyed Dogma-style)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Install Tab Mix Plus, which has an Undo Close Tab feature that lets you restore closed tabs (10 closed tabs are preserved and available to be un-closed by default).
Because no website would ever split a 1000-word article into 5 "pages", to be read sequentially, in order to increase banner ad impressions.
And no 'blog or message board would ever have, say, links to 5 or 10 discussions on its front page, every morning.
Tabs are good because you can quickly skim through content while waiting for other content to render in the background. Open 50 tabs first thing in the morning, and you won't have to move your mouse for the rest of the day.
I've run into the bug that you mention a few times, but I'm pretty sure that it started after I installed the Tab Mix Plus extension. It doesn't happen too often though and Tab Mix Plus' session-handling makes crashes virtually non-annoying ;-)
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.
The OP meant "Guardian Force", ala Final Fantasy 8. Ifrit has a hard time with computers.
God Fucking Damnit
The spec states:
which sounds like what you want. Unfortunately Mozilla hasn't implemented that behaviour, which is a bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3025 66) that ought to be fixed. (I guess you could get the right behaviour by creating the canvas element in script and adding it to the DOM, but that would be kind of nasty.)
The spec also says that authors should provide alternate content that "conveys essentially the same function or purpose as the bitmap canvas" and also "should not use the canvas element in a document when a more suitable element is available. For example, it is inappropriate to use a canvas element to render a page heading". I can't think how else they'd encourage the use of alternate content, but it'd be interesting to see any ideas of how to help overcome the laziness of authors. Chrome-spoofing (assuming you mean making canvas content that looks like part of the web browser) is usually no different to the issues caused by normal images, except that the drawWindow method (a Mozilla extension (not added through the proper extension mechanism, which isn't terribly polite of them – Opera has done it more properly)) would let scripts read the pixels from e.g. form buttons and work out what theme you're using – so that's currently limited to being run by JS code in extensions and it can't be used by web content, to avoid the security issues.
And SVG does seem a generally better way of doing vector graphics than canvas+JS; but it's worse at dynamic bitmap graphics, which is why both exist :-)
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".
You mean like the way that the Gnome project thinks the ability to have seperate wall papers on each virtual desktop is a "bad thing"?
Drives me nuts. But you can change Firefox 2.0 back to the older behavior I did so in beta 1 but don't remember how to do so. Google should help.
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/"
2.0 b1 doesn't crash for me, try disabling some extensions.
It DOES, however, refuse to run on Vista. Hopefully this release includes fixes for that.
Where can I download "reasonable" for Microsoft Windows? Which middle-button emulator do you recommend?
Which one? I have a Mac, and my Mighty Mouse has four "second" buttons.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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 didn't have that extension installed, and I got bit by the bug more than "a few times" -- if I had it open long enough, it would *always* happen. As long as I can remember, definitely all 1.0.x and 1.5.x versions, maybe pre-1.0 also.
Are you using the Linux version? I also run FF on my Mac PowerBook and have never noticed the bug, and my session was approaching a month. But I don't use it nearly as much as I use my desktop Linux machine (it's suspended most of the time).
Am hoping my luck continues with 2.0. I'm definitely thrilled with it so far!
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 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"
My web browser has, currently, approximately 170 tabs. If each one of those had a close box that would double the amount of real estate taken up by my tabs, and, in the process, clutter it with a huge amount of redundant graphics and information.
I prefer my close-box-less tabs, thanks. It's all down to preference and usage.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
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.
Also, if you access the context menu for a tab (right click on windows), it doesn't bring that tab to the top. So you can right click + close tab as well as 'middle' clicking but the latter is v.convinient.
I for one welcome built-in spell checking.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
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.
> You mean like the way that the Gnome project thinks the ability to have seperate wall papers on each virtual desktop is a "bad thing"?
:-/ I was hoping to see this in Gnome 2.16. No joy. Don't suppose you know of any patches that'll do this?
You're the fourth person in a week
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.
1) Enter "about:config" as URL.
2) Search for "middle"
3) Set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false 4) Done
So do I. If it means I never sea another mistake again then I will bee happy.
liqbase
I'm pretty sure Konqueror moved in exactly the opposite direction - from having close buttons on every tab, to having just one at the end...
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.
That's what the "Printer friendly version" is for!
Frankly I prefer the Safari way, with a close button on every tab.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Let's not give IE7 any credit for that "innovation"--they stole it from Opera. Since when did anybody cool copy IE?
:%s:work:/.:g
Using the Linux version. Interesting, I never ran into the bug before installing Tab Mix. I did install a few other extensions at the same time though, but nothing that had anything to do with window/tab-handling. But the way I use my browser, I have two tabs open permanently (mail and a homemade portal) and I can't seem to remember running into the issue in either of those tabs. Maybe we're just seeing the same symptoms, but from different issues.
No I do not. If the don't add it soon I may just do it myself.
Yes, I'm sitting at a dual G5 right now and I despise the mouse completely. I push down on the mouse accidentally all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How could anything look good in the butt-ugly "classic theme"?
;-)
You need to upgrade to the 21st century.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
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.