Firefox 2.0 RC2 Review

segphault writes "Ars Technica has a comprehensive review of Firefox 2.0 RC2. It includes screenshot comparisons that illuminate the user interface changes that have transpired since the second beta, and it examines the similarities between the browser tab implementation from Internet Explorer 7 and the new tab management features in RC2. From the article: 'If RC2 is any indication, Firefox 2.0 is an incremental improvement of the 1.5.x series with performance improvements and a handful of relatively useful features. Based on my own experience, I consider it stable enough for regular use, but I endorse caution for users that rely on a lot of extensions, as most extensions aren't yet compatible with Firefox 2.0.'"

Comments

Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

All but one of my ~dozen installed extensions (largely developer oriented) currently work, with the exception being TBE. Firefox 2 seems pretty good, but it would've been fairer for this to have been v1.5.

Re:Extensions

[kwanbis]

you know about the many changes on the rendering engine, right? And how about the incredible reduction of memory leaks?

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the rendering engine has only gone from 1.8.0.x to 1.8.1, I wouldn't really consider that much of a change. Memory leaks are important, but not a full version increment worthy.

Re:Extensions

[saridder]

Less than half of my extensions worked, but even worse was that my theme didn't work. That made me go back to 1.5. And none of the spell check features in the forms worked either. Loved the "tab remember" feature where you can close the browser and it will remember all the pages you had open in the previous session.

Re:Extensions

[kwanbis]

thanks for the tip. Yes, probably my first multi-line post.

Re:Extensions

[samkass]

Loved the "tab remember" feature where you can close the browser and it will remember all the pages you had open in the previous session.

This was one of my favorite features from Opera 4-5 years ago. Glad to see the idea finally spreading.

Re:Extensions

[burndive]

The API might change between any x.y release. In my opinion, it's a good policy. Extensions can do almost anything in FF, so it makes sense that the extension authors should check each version to make sure their extension works with it.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to write an extension and specify that it works between 0.8 and 99.0. It's not nice to do that without testing, but you can. There are also a couple of ways to trick an extension into installing on a non-supported version of FF.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

kwanbis (597419)

Yes, probably my first multi-line post.

Please, please tell me you didn't purchase this 'low' ID number.

Re:Extensions

[morcego]

Loved the "tab remember" feature where you can close the browser and it will remember all the pages you had open in the previous session.

This was a standard feature on Galeon 1 (gtk web browser). I currently have it on Firefox 1.x with the Session Saver extension, which works pretty well (even tho Session support is still not was good as we used to have on Galeon 1).

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy on Ebay was very nice. He gave him a /100 deal, so it only cost 5974.19.

Re:Extensions

[symbolic]

I hope it's an important enough upgrade that it includes some work on the rendering engine. If you've ever tried to manage dynamic content (via AJAX), there are some notable problems. If they've improved it, I'll be happy.

Re:Extensions

[carnifex0]

What a sucker, mine only cost $1201.68

Re:Extensions

[kwanbis]

jaja ... no, i did not buy the ID ... i mean, can i buy an id, and change the "name"?

Re:Extensions

[HeroreV]

Slashdot, for some reason, requires that you use HTML tags for formatting - spaces in the form do nothing.

That's not true. There's a dropdown menu next to the preview and submit buttons that lets you choose how Slashdot handles whitespace and HTML. You must be blind if you've never noticed it.

The default can even be changed in your preferences so you don't have to change it every time. The only HTML I used was for this post was for the quote, and I didn't have to touch the menu.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is ajax, not firefox. It's a damn html parser!

Re:Extensions

[Gunny101]

The biggest improvement in my mind, is the fact they fixed the memory leak in Java. Now all of my Ajax sites do not horde 100MB of memory in Firefox after using them for a while. The spell check is good too, as my posts here will read better ;)

Re:Extensions

[Shads]

What's the going rate on a four digit sequential under 5000? LOL.

Re:Extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java memory leak, huh? Do you know what the J in AJAX stands for?

Re:Extensions

[HeroreV]

You know what I love? Open source. Glad to see the idea spreading. Too bad Opera hasn't been receptive to it.

Re:Extensions

[Firehed]

Well some people might not want those fifteen tabs of porn to reopen after hurredly closing the browser, since the person next opening the browser might be the one for whom it was just hurredly closed. I hope there's an override key.

Re:Extensions

[Disavian]

ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!

Re:Extensions

[scotch]

What's the going rate for a five digit sequential under 5000? LOL.

Re:Extensions

[jamstar7]

Session Saver extension does it for me. Guess we won't need it anymore.

Re:Extensions

[Mage Powers]

Use a different browser for porn then, like say mozilla or opera. Not that thats what I do...

Re:Extensions

[stymyx]

Actually, Mozilla has decided to keep most of the rendering upgrades waiting for Firefox 3. (See the Gecko branch plan).

Re:Extensions

[Nurgled]

By default, Opera will prompt on startup for whether you want to "continue from last time" or "start with no tabs". You can have it remember this choice and not prompt you again, if you wish. However, it'll still remember what you had open because when Opera detects that it was shut down in a less-than-clean fashion (i.e. it crashed) it'll pop up that startup dialog anyway, in a gesture of "I'm sorry I crashed; I'll try my best to put you back where you were."

If you're worried about people seeing your porn habits, you should probably be more worried about the "Tab trashcan" which lets you re-open tabs that you've closed recently. The history on that will grow until the menu fills the screen.

Re:Extensions

[Nurgled]

It would be nice if they would at least provide guaranteed stable APIs for doing certain common things, such as adding new toolbar buttons, hooking HTML DOM events or whatever. Sure, some Extensions need to get down and dirty with Mozilla's innards, but most of them are doing relatively simple and common things for which there could easily be a stable API.

Even though the API might be "generally stable" right now, it's quite off-putting to me as a developer that they make no guarantees about the stability of any parts of the framework, and that anything I write will have a guaranteed expiry date unless I someone makes a re-release for each new version of the browser.

Re:Extensions

[Hast]

Every extention contains a small descriptor file which describes the extention. In this file there is also a field that state which versions the extention is verified for, it is actually this field which needs updating.

On the Ars forum there was a link to a "Nightly Build something" extention which makes it possible to override this check.

You can also unpack the extention and fix it yourself.

Re:Extensions

[bigpresh]

I use an extension called "MR Tech Local Install" to make other extensions work with later Firefox versions... I've only ever had one case where forcing the extension to work under a different FF version caused any problems (that was with Tab Mix Plus IIRC).

With MR Tech Local Install you can right-click extensions in the extensions dialog and select "Make Compatible" and they Just Work - very handy to try out the latest beta versions etc but still have all your favourite extensions working!

Re:Extensions

[tehcyder]

you should probably be more worried about the "Tab trashcan" which lets you re-open tabs that you've closed recently. The history on that will grow until the menu fills the screen.

When I close and re-open Opera, the Tab Trashcan has cleared its history, not sure if this was some option I changed and forgot about?

Re:Extensions

[wampus]

Make me an offer.

Re:Extensions

[h2g2bob]

Or you could just create a different profile in Firefox. Open with "firefox -ProfileManager".

For added security, you can make the icon you open firefox with as the "safe" "firefox -P default".

It also makes it marginally safer too as cookies and stuff are seperated for different profiles.

Re:Extensions

[symbolic]

I disagree. The problems occur as the content itself is changed. IF you want an example of what I'm referring to, create a table with a few columns that contain entries long enough to wrap. Then, change the order of the rows. Then, switch them back to the original order. The problems should be very obvious at this point. Specifically, there doesn't seem to be a consistent way to calculate where (or why) line breaks occur within a column entry. Since each column has the potential to shift its width based on whatever line-break methodology was used, it makes for quite a nasty little UI experience. This only seems to affect the linux version- it didn't seem like the windows version was as susceptible.

Re:Extensions

[arevos]

To be fair, Firefox has had extensions supporting this functionality for almost as long as Opera, as I recall using Session Saver back when Firefox was Phoenix. This is just the first time this functionality has been built into the browser by default.

Re:Extensions

[Dan Ost]

I used to use Session Saver, but recently I've been
getting that same functionality from Tab Mix Plus.

Lets me get away with one less extension.

Re:Extensions

[Nurgled]

You seem to be correct. I remember it persisting in an earlier version, but my install of the latest version also empties the closed window list on exit.

pun intended

[User 956]

and it examines the similarities between the browser tab implementation from Internet Explorer 7 and the new tab management features in RC2.

One could almost say that they've been "keeping tabs" on the competition.

Re:pun intended

[PhrostyMcByte]

I noticed the random Vista-ish styled tabs in it. Now it looks totally out of place with the rest of the browser, which looks built for XP.

Re:pun intended

[Dachannien]

One could almost say that they've been "keeping tabs" on the competition.

That pun stunk so bad I had to open a new window.

Re:pun intended

[BalanceOfJudgement]

[sniffs around]

Oh man.. didn't help.. better open another window.

[/even worse joke]

Re:pun intended

[Chops]

One could almost say that they've been "keeping tabs" on the competition.

It's also possible that they've been keeping tabs on galeon, which has had tabs like this since before Firefox existed.

RC2 woes

[TheDarkener]

You know, I installed RC2 on my computer last night after I performed the recommended hardware upgrades, and my video drivers wouldn't work, my sound broke and it kept bugging me about activation. It wouldn't even let me download files from my favorite websites!!

Oh wait.

Re:RC2 woes

[chris macura]

The parent isn't a troll per-se. It refers to Vista rather than Firefox. It's sort of amusing actually. Perhaps +1 troll, -1 funny would be appropriate. :)

Re:RC2 woes

[Brickwall]

I expect to get flamed for this, but I installed FF after reading so many favourable comments here. Using FF, I cannot access Yahoo mail, or any of my secure banking sites. I've tried to match the internet security options with those of Internet Exploder, but I still get errors. I like FF for the sites it does work on, but it's not a panacea for me, at least.

Re:RC2 woes

[GooberToo]

Sounds like you don't have the required plugins installed. Yahoo mail works without problem with FF and has for years. If you're having problems, it is not a FF issue.

Re:RC2 woes

[kbrosnan]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/SSL_is_disabled

Re:RC2 woes

[Anonymous Coward]

> Using FF, I cannot access Yahoo mail, or any of my secure banking sites.

You should fix that asap.

I (and all people I know) have no problem accessing secure sites with Firefox. If you can't, the reasons can be:

(1) - You have mis-installed Firefox (some access right problems)
(2) - You have mis-configured Firefix (disabled ssl, or added funky b0rken extensions)
(3) - Your ie have been hacked and all your ssl connections are chanelled through some sort of hidden proxy, and this break under fixrefox.

You can't take the risk that (3) is the answer, so you have to fix Firefox and make sure it is either (1) or (2).

What did the suggestions in other replies gave you ? What are the error messages ?

Re:RC2 woes

[Bert64]

I've never had any problems accessing yahoo mail with firefox...
Out of curiosity i logged in just now, using RC2 (on linux) and all seems fine.
I also don't have issues with any of the banking sites i use, one of them detects firefox 2 as being an "unsupported browser" but works with 1.5. The other sites i use just seem to work with anything.

Re:RC2 woes

[bigpresh]

I've never had problems with Yahoo Mail through Firefox, or my Internet banking sites, or any others.

On the rare occasion I come across a 90's style "this site only works in IE, you're using something else" message from an idiotic website, the User Agent Switcher extension lets me pretend to be IE on XP with a couple of clicks and a page refresh, and happily use the site.

Re:RC2 woes

[bit01]

I expect to get flamed for this ...

Why? Just because somebody has a different experience from you doesn't mean they're going to flame you.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:RC2 woes

[Brickwall]

Well, FF works fine for all my other sites. I haven't loaded a single extension into it. I'm running 1.5.0.7 on Windows XP. As suggested, I checked the options, and SSL 3.0 and TSL 1.0 are both set. SSL 2.0 was set as well, but I checked another poster's link, which suggested I disable SSL 2.0, so I did. The error message I get is "Unable to connect. Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at login.yahoo.com." It then suggests three options: Try again in a few minutes (never works), or if I can't load any pages, check my net connection (but I can download tons of pages, just not these few), and see if FF is behind a firewall and allowed to access the net (since I can download many pages, I don't think this is it either). So now you've scared the crap out of me. If I run netstat, will that help me find if option 3 is the culprit? What should I look for?

Solid, but no biggie

[Kelson]

I've been using the Firefox 2 betas and RCs since beta 1. It is, overall, better than 1.5, but there's no "gee whiz!" factor this time through. (Though I'll admit inline spell-checking is quite nice!)

Of course, as a web developer, I'm really looking forward to Firefox 3, which will be built on Gecko 1.9 and should have some good improvements to the rendering engine. (Firefox 2 jumps from Gecko 1.8 to 1.8.1 -- minor changes only.)

Oh, yeah, on the extensions issue -- admittedly I don't use very many, but most of the ones I rely on have been updated by now. At this point I'm mainly waiting for the HTML Tidy-based validator.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

(Though I'll admit inline spell-checking is quite nice!)

*sob* Does this mean no more Grammar Nazi jokes? :(

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[Rasdan]

Nah, it just means no more spelling nazi jokes. :)

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[AndrewNeo]

Tidy works fine. Just have to edit the install.rdf. I had like six extensions that didn't go up to version 2 but after changing the version line in the files it works just fine.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[chris macura]

Not my poem, but really funny:

Eye halve a spelling chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of 'gee whiz!' factor would you like?

It's a web browser. You browse the web with it. That's it.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[a.d.trick]

It is, overall, better than 1.5, but there's no "gee whiz!" factor this time through.

I think that was the point of the 2.0 release. Same old gecko (important thing for use web devs), but hopefully a slightly more useable and stable web browser. "Gee Whiz!" things can be good, but too many and they end up being a pain for the millions of people are trying to keep up with it. Now that Firefox has gone mainline I think you'll see a lot less bleeding-edge stuff in it. The good part of it is that they are in a lot better posstion to advance web standards now. I can't wait for standardized SVG and MNG support, DOM3 and CSS3 are high on my list too. Enough arm-chair reporting: Qui sera, sera.

P.S. do you know what the proper way to mark up phrases like the above that are stolen from foreign languages?

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[jZnat]

P.S. do you know what the proper way to mark up phrases like the above that are stolen from foreign languages?

Ruby? I've never used it (the thing from XHTML 1.1, not the programming language), but that might work.

Also, I think there's a much better chance of APNG becoming standardised than MNG becoming widespread. APNG will become part of the standard libpng library, and it's much simpler to implement than MNG was.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[parme]

Tidy works fine. Just have to edit the install.rdf.

No you don't. Just download the latest version from the developer's website:

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/

works fine with 2.0rc2

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[Kelson]

Thanks for the tip! The updater couldn't get past 0.7.9.3, probably because it's the latest version on addons.mozilla.org. But going to the extension's home page (double-checked, since y'know, installing software from random Slashdot postings is a bit risky -- no offense) does indeed show a newer version, which is quite happy to install on Firefox 2.0!

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[jrumney]

Oh, yeah, on the extensions issue -- admittedly I don't use very many, but most of the ones I rely on have been updated by now.

That was my experience too. Of the 18 extensions I have installed, only 4 have not been updated.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

But you'll still have to wait for IE10 coming out in 15 years time before microsoft bother to support it.

Re:Solid, but no biggie

[PurifyYourMind]

FWIW, I tried the 3.0 alpha nightly recently and found rendering speed to be noticeably quicker. I tried multiple sites and made sure there was no cache advantage.

extensions and themes

[SilentGhost]

out of ten most popular themes only 3 compatible with coming 2.0.* line, including one claiming up to 3rd version compatibility. of course change of default theme can make a difference for new users, but i bet majority of existing users would prefer they shiny thingy in place.

Re:extensions and themes

[J053]

To make your 1.5 extensions and themes work:

1. Download the .xpi file
2. Unpack it (it's a ZIP file, really) into a directory
3. Edit the install.rdf file - find the line with "maxVersion:" and change it to (for example) "3.*"
4. Replace the install.rdf in the .xpi ZIPfile with your modified one
5. Install the extension/theme: in Firefox, browse to "file:///wherever-you-put-it/whatever.xpi"
                                                                in Thunderbird, use the Installer

I have yet to see an extension for 1.5.x that didn't work with 2.x after doing this

Re:extensions and themes

[loconet]

Part of the reason why so many extensions/themes have already been updated is because The team at addons.mozilla.org offered a t-shirt to developers who updated their extensions before a certain date. Seems to have worked. (I'm still waiting for my tshirt :p)

Re:extensions and themes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, just type in about:config in your urlbar, right click in the listing area and add a boolean called extensions.checkCompatibility=false

Re:extensions and themes

[IvyMike]

Can't someone make an extension that does this for me?

Re:extensions and themes

[Bob54321]

Look for an extension called "Nightly Tester Tools" or something like that (too lazy to google for you). It has a feature alloing you to "force" extensions to install in any version.

Re:extensions and themes

[Anonymous Coward]

An easier way to get old extensions working: Go to about:config and create a new false boolean value named extensions.checkCompatibility.

Re:extensions and themes

[mattcoz]

From TFA: "The extremely useful Nightly Tester Tools extension has an excellent little feature that enables users to circumvent the version checks typically performed during extension installation." It's a great extension that any nightly user could never live without. I've already got a few other people to user it that were hesitant about upgrading to 2.0.

Re:extensions and themes

[Dersaidin]

Perhaps someone should make an extension to ignore the maxVersion on other extensions...

Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[NineNine]

It's kind of ridiculous that they still have such a huge bug at this point, but does anybody know if Firefox's memory leak(s) is(are) fixed yet? I'm really tired of leaving up a browser up overnight, and coming in in the morning to find my machine all jammed up because Firefox is sitting on 200+ Meg of memory for a single web page. It makes me not able to commit my company completely to Firefox (that, and a glaring lack of ActiveX).

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Kelson]

Yes and no.

Because there is no big fat memory leak. There are a whole bunch of little ones that add up. They've fixed a lot of them. They fixed a bunch of 'em in the 1.5.0.x series, and a bunch more in 2.0.

I doubt they've got everything, but 2.0 should have less of a memory problem than 1.5.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[JourneyExpertApe]

This makes me wonder why there isn't a widely used browser written in a language with garbage collection like Java or C#*. It would certainly cut down on, if not completely eliminate memory leaks. Granted, it would run a bit slower, but it would be so much easier to port to other platforms.

*There probably is some kind of browser written in Java, but I don't know of any that fully support all of the web technologies that we have come to rely on, like AJAX and, to a lesser extent, a plugin mechanism.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[jafac]

hotjava was a java-based browser you could download from Sun for free, back in the 1990's.

Unfortunately, it only meets one of your criteria - the other; it was not widely used.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[sleeper0]

For what it's worth I believe they still have a ways to go. I write this with RC2 having launched it somewhere between 24 and 36 hours ago. It was using 237MB of memory, but when I closed my other tabs it dropped down to 193MB. Obviously if I closed it and relaunched it on this page it would only be using a fraction of that ram. Compare that to other processes currently running and it dwarfs them all - VMWare virtual center server 2.0 is using 44MB, Sql Server 42MB, Outlook 2007 36MB, Apache 32MB, IE 7 RC2 27MB. IE would definitely be using more if it had gotten more use, but many of the other applications have been running for at least a week or two.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever though that memory is cheaper than processor? Slowness in exchange of using less memory (and firefox 2.0 beta is not using that much memory anyways) seems kind of a terribly wrong idea to me.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Paradise Pete]

It was using 237MB of memory, but when I closed my other tabs it dropped down to 193MB. Obviously if I closed it and relaunched it on this page it would only be using a fraction of that ram.

Just because it hasn't released it to the system doesn't mean it won't reuse it internally.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[rand_chars]

Just because it's being reused internally doesn't mean some other app doesn't need it more.

Deallocating/Reallocating is preferable to being swapped out because a different app needs the space.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[alain_f]

Well, large parts of Firefox are written in Javascript (which is garbage collected), and they are propabaly responsible for many memory leaks. One of the reasons is because of cycles between JS and C++ objects (through XPCOM) which cannot be collected with the GC technologies used on both side. Avoiding cycles require very tricky uses of weak references, which is itself error prone.

There is an ongoing project to add a cycle collector to XPCOM:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33307 8

For a web browser written in a garbage collected languages, there is MMM ;-)

http://pauillac.inria.fr/~rouaix/mmm/

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[suv4x4]

I doubt they've got everything, but 2.0 should have less of a memory problem than 1.5.

Makes you wonder why are they even going to release 2.0 just yet.

To me 2.0 is Firefox 1.6 + some hardcoded Luna skin elements (that look ridiculous in other modes on Windows, Mac or Linux).

Pure reason: marketing. They dropped half the stuff they planned for Firefox 2.0 and kept calling it a major release only to save face. If you thought Vista dropping WinFS was bad, Firefox 2.0 is uniquely bad.

Firefox is quickly becoming a think of the past. I do think only web developers will stick to it because of a small core of developer extensions.

I've already started recommending Opera 9 to anyone that complained about Firefox memory/cpu/performance issues. When IE7 comes out, I might as well just ask them to move back to it versus looking for 3rd party browsers.

Bad, Firefox, really bad.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of ActiveX support is stopping the company I work for too. That, and No Touch Deployment .Net applications. Still, who knows for the future? Why can't it just be implemented and turned off / not even installed by default?

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Tony Hoyle]

Garbage collecting languages leak too - I've had to debug serious memory leaks in both Java and c# - garbage collectors are easy to fool.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[jesser]

I agree that calling this release Firefox 1.6 would have made more sense in some ways, but that hardly sounds like a reason to recommend Opera over Firefox.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats wierd, I can leave Firefox running for weeks at a time on my Linux system. Where is this memory leak everyone complains about?

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because Opera has never bumped a version number unexpectedly.

Re:Is the big fat memory leak fixed?

[Dan Ost]

Deallocating/Reallocating is preferable to being swapped out because a different app needs the space.

Can you please post the technical reasoning behind this statement?

It seems to me that allocating and then reusing memory is advantageous when compared
to pedantically deallocating/reallocating memory in just about every way assuming you
have sufficient swap space. It reduces the number of system calls and
even though you may have increased the number of page faults, page faults are
largely handled by hardware whereas allocation/deallocation is completely
handled by the OS (and are, therefore, more expensive).

Almost ready..

[Anonymous Coward]

After upgrading to V2 RC2, its working pretty good so far. Session restore is pretty handy (now I can install new extensions, restart the browser and start from whereever I had left), and tab management is pretty good too.

Though there are some bugs - esp the toolbar customization needs to be looked at. My V1.5 toolbar customization is not sitting well with RC2 - esp the Search Engine. Its hogging all the screen from left to right, and I had to move it to its own bar (previously, it was sitting with Google Toolbar).

And of course, better memory management was a welcome change.

All extensions except on worked fine (had to disable extension compatibility check for Greasemonkey, and it worked perfectly fine).

Re:Almost ready..

[Anonymous Coward]

my search box was doing that too. put this in your userchrome.css and pick a width you like
#PersonalToolbar>#search-container{max-width:200px !important;}

My biggest question...

[Tarlus]

Has the memory leak issue been addressed in this version?

Deliverance touches

[Eric Pierce]

What's up with the dirty old house?

Eric

I'm liking the OS X version...

[drerwk]

The built in spelling checker is my favorite addition. I've not had much luck with the extensions that offered this feature. Now I'd really be happy if Firefox would honor the browser.tabs.loadOnNewTab - I just want my homepage in each new tab. I suppose I could again use one of the many extensions, but if the setting is there it should work. Any opinions on the use of large numbers of extensions verses getting it in the browser directly?

Re:I'm liking the OS X version...

[viniosity]

I've been using it for a while now and the built-in spell checker is definitely a big plus. One thing that seems missing though is the ability to cycle windows with command tilde (~). I don't have my old copy of 1.5 around so can't confirm if that just disappeared in 2.0 or whether it never got implemented. Still, even with tabs, that's a nice key combo and I'm missing it.

Re:I'm liking the OS X version...

[Anonymous Coward]

It works for me.

Re:I'm liking the OS X version...

[Secrity]

I prefer to see functionaility added with extensions rather than built-in. Added functions quickly add bload, just add the extensions that you want to use.

Re:I'm liking the OS X version...

[BenoitRen]

SeaMonkey can do this function out of the box.

Tab changes suck!

[MikeFM]

I've been testing the upcoming version for a while and I hate the tab changes. The tab changes are crappy. I'm an experienced user and I think so and my girlfriend that is a casual user complains about the changes too. Sure, you can make things mostly act the same as we're used to but it takes an effort to reconfigure and still doesn't work very well.

Having a close widget on each tab wastes space and is more work than a fixed location, the drop down doesn't work very well and should only appear if there are to many tabs, tab scrolling doesn't work very well and is probably not needed with the dropdown listing, and more tabs should be allowed to appear before they start scrolling.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the tabs. I used to think that, logically, each tab should have its own close tab button. Now being able to actually use it that way, however, it's terrible.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know...the "middle-click closes a background tab" doesn't work on platforms that don't have a native middle click (*cough*OS X*cough*). The ability to close background tabs is a useful feature and FF 2.0 will enable everyone to do this.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Dr.Syshalt]

You can disable close widgets. I've figured out there should be the way to do that, checked and here you go

Go to about:config

Change the value of browser.tabs.closeButtons

1 - the usual look
0 - only the active tab has the close widget
2 - no close widgets.

Have fun

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about one global close widget?

Maybe after Mozilla sees that the adoption rates amongst geeks is fairly low with the 2.0 series they'll change their mind...

Re:Tab changes suck!

[MacJedi]

What about one global close widget?

You can do it. The parent poster had an incomplete list:

0 - only the active tab has the close widget
1 - the usual look (close widgets on each tab)
2 - no close widgets.
3 - global close widget (at far right)

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Skidge]

Thanks! A value of 3 set it back to the older version--just what I was looking for.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[GotenXiao]

As always, the behaviour can be changed as much as you like. Tab Mix Plus is a good one to get to alter the behaviour.

To be honest, I'm glad of the changes; scrolling tab bar is something I've wanted builtin for a long while.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Traf-O-Data-Hater]

Different strokes for diffrent folks... this scrolling tab feature sucks, for me. I'd rather see all my tabs, bunched up or not. Anyone know the about:config setting to make it the same as 1.5? I couldn't see any obvious setting.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[mdboyd]

I'm an experienced user and I think so and my girlfriend that is a casual user complains about the changes too.

Girlfriend... what kind of slashdotter are you?
Let's hope the complaint about firefox isn't an analogy for other things...;)

Re:Tab changes suck!

[6ULDV8]

Thank you!

This was my only complaint in my 30 minutes of using RC2. I didn't like that effect in IE7 either.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[MikeFM]

I think scrolling the tabs is a good idea but that it doesn't let you open enough tabs before activating scrolling, doesn't scroll very well, and is redundant with the dropdown list of tabs (which I think is better than scrolling). In short, it's not ready for prime time in my opinion. I'd rather they hold off and do it right if they're going to make such a change.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[MikeFM]

I've figured out the secret to making open source work - have lots of kids, train them to be open source coders, and gradually code yourself to world domination. Bwahaha I'll kill those unwanted tab features yet!

Re:Tab changes suck!

[MikeFM]

Changing default behaviors and appearence is important though. Yes I can change anything I want in Firefox but that doesn't mean I want the defaults to suck. I deal with other users that I have to support and I use computers outside my control sometimes - breaking the defaults makes those more work for me.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true, middle-click works fine to close tabs on OS X. As long as you have a mouse that can middle-click, anyway.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[jZnat]

Some people like having the close button on the tabs. You can do this in basically any other browser with tabs, so why not Firefox as well?

Re:Tab changes suck!

[MikeFM]

Because it's bad UI design. Just because other people do things wrong doesn't mean we have to do it too. Does it actually make using tabs easier? My experience is that it makes using tabs harder for everyone except the complete newbies that don't use tabs anyway.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[ciuli]

You can tune most of those settings and hopefully come up with a layout you like... Take a look over here: http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/07/09/how-to-twe ak-firefox-20-beta-1/.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[Tim C]

And that's one of my few complaints about Firefox. I just want to be able to use and configure the browser, I don't want to have to search google to find out how to use the settings in about:config. Why something representing as major a change as this isn't in the preferences applet I'll never know.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[xmuskrat]

I agree. I've got 20/100 vision and I can hardly tell which tab is selected or not selected. I was very happy when I saw the mock ups, because selected tabs were solid white and the others a gradient. However, they ditched that for some reason in the final release. So, yet again as in v1.5 it's hard for me to tell whats selected. Maybe somebody will take pity on me and write a new tab extension that makes these usable and accessible.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[philolaus]

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth (in about:config) defaults to 100 (pixels); set it to a smaller value to allow the tabs to accumulate more before the scrollers appear.

Re:Tab changes suck!

[fczuardi]

* type about:config on the location bar

* change the preference browser.tabs.closeButton to value 3 to get the correct close button back

* change the preference browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to something like 16 or 12 to prevent the stupid tab scroller from showing with just a few tabs opened

Re:? seconds until gootube announcment due...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the reason why slashdot has dupes :(
I thought it was brand spanking new news...

"most extensions"? FYI !

[arielCo]

Well, I use a lot of invasive extensions, and I only lost Session Manager, which is unsurprising since Fx now includes a similar feature and they would probably step on each others' toes. Survivors:

• Adblock Plus
• Video Downloader
• Inspect this
• IE Tab
• IE View Lite
• JS View
• EditCSS
• GMarks
• Google Notebook
• Sage RSS Reader

All in all, I agree that this is mostly an incremental upgrade, and it is somewhat faster, but I'm not sure it deserves the new major version. Several tiny UI bugs didn't get fixed.

Re:"most extensions"? FYI !

[Anonymous Coward]

> Adblock Plus

Ah, another free surfer loser.

spellcheck

[vivek7006]

I jst upgreaded to RC2 and I musht say that the neu spellchek feeture works lik a charm

Re:spellcheck

[burndive]

You must not be new here.

Re:spellcheck

[benplaut]

You might want to upgrade to the latest nightly...

(Just a suggestion!!) -.-

Re:spellcheck

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, work flawlessly!
CmdrTaco and the rest of the editors, upgrade now to RC2! Please, somebody think of the grammar Nazis

Re:spellcheck

[Anonymous Coward]

j00 misspelled "liek"

Re:spellcheck

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I've never found a good Swedish Chief spell checker. Did you find yours in the default Firefox install or did you have to update it separately? ;-)

Improvements for developers, too

[Black Acid]

Probably the most interesting features to programmers are the addition of the SQLite engine, and significant JavaScript enhancements heavily borrowed from Perl and Python. You can use generators (yield statement), Pythonic iterators, array comprehensions, and what the Mozilla people call "destructuring assignment". Some examples from the article for the curious:

/* Destructuring assignment example - swap two values */
[a, b] = [b, a];
 
/* You can return multiple values from functions now */
function f() { return [1, 2, 3]; }
var [a, , b] = f();
document.write ("A is " + a + " B is " + b + "<BR>\n");
 
/* Easier fibonacci sequences with generators */
function fib() {
  var i = 0, j = 1;
  while (true) {
    yield i;
    var t = i; i = j; j += t;
  }
}
 
/* Array comprehensions */
var evens = [i for (i in range(0, 21)) if (i % 2 == 0)];
 
/* New scoping semantics with 'let' expression/definition/declaration */
if (x > y)
{
  let const k = 37;
  let gamma : int = 12.7 + k;
  let i = 10;
  let function f(n) { return (n/3)+k; }
  return f(gamma) + f(i);
}

Good stuff.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[MobyDisk]

I assume that when we say "JavaScript" we are talking about proprietary extensions on top of the ECMAScript standard. Is Mozilla just adding features to this for plug-in developers? I hope that these features don't exist in the regular browser unless you use the "version=1.7" option because that would introduce incompatibilities. Does anyone know if this is the case?

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Spit]

Geez, what happened to FF being a lightweight alternative to the suite? A fucking SQL engine and more bloat for JS! What next, OpenGL, Parrot and an mp3 player? Christ on a bike, FF is fucking slow enough lately, why the fuck does it need this extra bloat?

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...you know that the Firefox UI is programmed in XUL+JavaScript, right?

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[GrouchoMarx]

No, Bad stuff. Are these new features part of the ECMAScript standard? If not, then wtf are they doing in the browser?

When Microsoft "extends" the web without asking the standards committee, they get vilified (and rightly so). Mozilla shouldn't get a by on it just because they're cool. "Embrace and extend" is bad, no matter who's doing it.

Gah, just get me a standard that I can bloody use consistently!

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[DrEasy]

Will extension developers be able to use the SQLite engine to store extension-specific stuff? In fact, is that the reason for its inclusion, or are there any other uses for it?

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[jZnat]

SQLite is used in tons of programs. It is indeed a light-weight SQL database that is most commonly used in a simple environment where data needs to be stored and retrieved quickly.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[HeroreV]

Geez, what happened to FF being a lightweight alternative to the suite?

It succeeded. You must have forgotten what Mozilla Application Suite was like.

A fucking SQL engine ...

There has always been a need to store data on the local machine. There was previously several different ways of doing this. Using SQLite will be a huge improvement once everything is switched over to it. Firefox will actually be lighter.

... and more bloat for JS!

"Mozilla" also refers to a platform (sometimes called Mozilla Application Framework among a billion other things). See XULRunner. These additions are useful for applications that are built on the Mozilla platform.

What next, OpenGL, ...

Yes. Duh. Firefox 3.0 will be rendered with Cairo, which can use OpenGL. Also, there's work to get the canvas element to support rendering through OpenGL. wiki blog The plan is for webpages to use OpenGL to render things in 3D.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[suv4x4]

Probably the most interesting features to programmers are the addition of the SQLite engine [mozilla.org], and significant JavaScript enhancements [mozilla.org] heavily borrowed from Perl and Python. You can use generators (yield statement), Pythonic iterators, array comprehensions, and what the Mozilla people call "destructuring assignment". Some examples from the article for the curious.

Good stuff.

Of course it's good stuff! Mozilla did it, and they invented JavaScript! Screw ECMA! Right? Wrong.

First of all those extensions make JS incredibly obscure. Take yield for example. everything in the function format is the same, but if anywhere inside it you used "yield", well.. then the whole function is totally not a function anymore and works in a completely different manner. I hope you comment your code well, such as:

// NOT A GENERATOR BEEP BEEP BEEP
function abc() {...} // ***GENERATOR** ***GENERATOR***
function abc2() {...}


If Microsoft introduced the same (obscure and mostly useless) extensions to JS without having them in the official ECMA draft or standard, all of you little fanboys would be screaming to hell and back.

And to those that wanna counterpoint me and link me to the proposals Mozilla made at ECMA, well flashnews: proposal is NOT a standard.

A lot of stuff, including Microsoft's VML, has a proposal status at W3C. Never accepted though.

Am I against progress? Waiting for obscure standards bodies to let us go on? No, in fact there's plenty of things that are almost in final draft state that Mozilla could implement that would make a difference in the web world:

typing and OOP

Those are pretty much finalized and sorely needed for any webdeveloper who had to hack up their own "extends" or "private/public/protected" conventions (i.e. any JS developer working on more than 30-40 lines of code).

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[johndubh]

SQLite, ImageMagick and controlled file system access are already available on the client-side to web-pages via the eclayer AJAX API. See http://www.eclayer.com/

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I was amazed seeing that the parent poster could think that "yield" was a good idea.

It is useless, it encapsulated state in a hidden way, it changes the semantic of functions, and it clashes with yield as used in ruby, for instance.

It is just insane.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Bad stuff. Are these new features part of the ECMAScript standard? If not, then wtf are they doing in the browser?

Gecko Javascript 1.7 == ECMA-262, revision 3, with some bits from E4X.

Hope that helps.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Spit]

It succeeded. You must have forgotten what Mozilla Application Suite was like.

I remember it well, it was snappy, had a much smaller memory footprint than FF1.5 and also had an inbuilt mail client.

There has always been a need to store data on the local machine. There was previously several different ways of doing this. Using SQLite will be a huge improvement once everything is switched over to it. Firefox will actually be lighter.

Great, the user data will be stored in blob rather than in textfiles.

"Mozilla" also refers to a platform (sometimes called Mozilla Application Framework among a billion other things). See XULRunner. These additions are useful for applications that are built on the Mozilla platform.

I thought Firefox was a browser product? I don't need an OS or runtime engine, there are far better and more robust solutions in place already. XUL apps will still be slow, clunky and redundant with these extensions.

Yes. Duh. Firefox 3.0

I was being sarcastic, but why does the browser have to handle its own low level rendering? FF has turned into a developer circle-jerk.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[moonbender]

I was being sarcastic, but why does the browser have to handle its own low level rendering?

It doesn't. It uses a multi-platform API which in turn does the low level rendering (or delegates it somewhere else). Not sure what's wrong with that - I look forward to it.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[Ginger Unicorn]

The thing is most of the GUI of firefox is written in javascript, so this new javascript gives them more of an ability to write reliable code. And thinking about it, a browser with 10% market share can hardly embrace, extend and extinguish. Anyone who writes some javascript that only works in the latest version of one browser which has a 10% market share total including all the older versions obviously isn't interested in including the vast majority of the population in their userbase.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[jesser]

The new "yield" and "let" keywords only work if you specify version 1.7. The other new features (array comprehensions, destructuring assignment, and maybe catchguards) are always enabled. Trying to use them in an older version would cause a syntax error, so you shouldn't have to worry about incompatibilities.

I wonder why the New in JavaScript 1.7 page doesn't say anything about this.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[cyfer2000]

Also E4X is ECMA-357

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[putte_xvi]

Great, the user data will be stored in blob rather than in textfiles.

I guess you haven't read about the Mork format they currently use.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[HeroreV]

Thanks for pointing out Mork. I read about it just a couple of weeks ago but couldn't remember the name. It's really interesting reading about such a terrible format. It's difficult to understand how anyone could write such horrible code and get it checked in.

Re:Improvements for developers, too

[HeroreV]

Great, the user data will be stored in blob rather than in textfiles.

Those blobs will be easier to read than some of the "textfiles" used now. It might not seem possible for a text based format to be so bad that SQLite blobs are easier to read, but it's true.

I thought Firefox was a browser product? I don't need an OS or runtime engine, there are far better and more robust solutions in place already.

Firefox is just a browser, but to run it requires the Mozilla platform stuff. It's planned for Firefox and Thunderbird to eventually be run from XULRunner so at least multiple copies of the platform won't be needed.

XUL apps will still be slow, clunky ...

But it's very easy to quickly produce working interfaces. It's a tradeoff like C++ versus Python.

If you don't like that Firefox uses a custom platform, you could always use something like Galeon/Epiphany, Camino, or K-Melon. They use the Gecko layout engine, but render the GUI around it without XUL.

Why ActiveX?

[khasim]

(that, and a glaring lack of ActiveX)

ActiveX is a Microsoft technology. Even Microsoft is trying to get away for the security holes they've created with that.

Sometimes, security means not implementing something if it cannot be implemented securely.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[nmb3000]

ActiveX is a Microsoft technology. Even Microsoft is trying to get away for the security holes they've created with that.

ActiveX is just an implementation of OLE and COM via the Internet Explorer browser. Anyone is able to write an interface that supports ActiveX controls. The idea that they are inherently insecure is an oft-proclaimed falsehood on Slashdot. IE's implementation has had problems, but that's not the same thing as the technology behind it.

ActiveX : Internet Explorer :: Extensions : Firefox

It all comes down to implementation of the interactive extension to the browser.

Sometimes, security means not implementing something if it cannot be implemented securely.

That is true enough, although the problem is usually between the chair and keyboard. The biggest problem with ActiveX, and the way it got it's bad reputation is users who click 'Yes' to everything. Give Firefox enough market share and it will become profitable for these malware authors to write extensions that screw a computer/browser the same way ActiveX can.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[Firehed]

Well sure, if websites didn't work without a certain extension installed. Or even automatically prompted to be installed for that matter. You have to manually add sites into a whitelist for valid extensions and then wait before clicking yes (hopefully this is thinking time, "do I actually want this installed?"). Not quite the same thing as an automatic "CLICK YES TO INSTALL SUPER PORN GRABBER 3.5 NOW!!!!!!!".

Re:Why ActiveX?

[NineNine]

Active X is INCREDIBLY useful for applications. It's much more advanced than AJAX, and it was there 5-8 years ago. There's no other way to make web apps that are that interactive, and that easy to deploy. Java never cut it (buggy, bloated, and hard to relatively hard to develop). AJAX is just another Javascript kludge. Active X is pretty damn useful when done correctly. I have a bunch of Active X apps that I use via IE.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[killjoe]

"Active X is INCREDIBLY useful for applications"

Yes, it has full access to your machine including the ability to read and write to hard drives, reboot your machine, muck with your registry etc.

"t's much more advanced than AJAX, and it was there 5-8 years ago. "

Yes. It was Microsoft's answer to the applet. Applets were first of course. Too bad Sun never could make them work because they were much safer then activex.

"Java never cut it (buggy, bloated, and hard to relatively hard to develop)."

Bloated maybe, buggy no, hard to develop? Nonsense. Much easier to develop java applets then activex components.

"AJAX is just another Javascript kludge. "

Yes.

"Active X is pretty damn useful when done correctly. I have a bunch of Active X apps that I use via IE."

Great if you are willing to use IE and windows.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[shutdown -p now]

The biggest problem with ActiveX is that it is, essentially, native executable code from an untrusted source executing on your computer. In contrast, Java applets are sandboxed on bytecode level.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[Tony Hoyle]

There's no other way to make web apps that are that interactive

That's because they're not web apps. They're *native code* which means they're no different to downloading an executable, except it happens automatically (hence why IE is so virus ridden).

Re:Why ActiveX?

[aug24]

That seems to be a little simplistic. Extensions can't read my email files. Extensions can't create smtp connections. Extensions can't be dynamically downloaded by a web page. Even if I clicked yes blindly they simply couldn't. Could they?

Justin.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[Patoski]

That is true enough, although the problem is usually between the chair and keyboard. The biggest problem with ActiveX, and the way it got it's bad reputation is users who click 'Yes' to everything. Give Firefox enough market share and it will become profitable for these malware authors to write extensions that screw a computer/browser the same way ActiveX can.

The ID10T issue is not just the domain of ActiveX. Almost all programs / application platforms are exposed to ID10Ts. What makes ActiveX so special? Java hasn't seen near the security issues (it has had it's share though) that ActiveX has over the years, and it is exposed to ID10T all the time. The sieves that are "Zone Boundaries" is ActiveX's real problem.

The idea that they are inherently insecure is an oft-proclaimed falsehood on Slashdot. IE's implementation has had problems, but that's not the same thing as the technology behind it.

Who cares about theory or if the idea is a good one? All that matters is that MS' implementation is pervasive and it is what most people use. The implementation of ActiveX in Windows *really* sucks from a security standpoint. What else matters?

ActiveX richly deserves the reputation is has.

Re:Why ActiveX?

[jsight]

That seems to be a little simplistic. Extensions can't read my email files. Extensions can't create smtp connections. Extensions can't be dynamically downloaded by a web page. Even if I clicked yes blindly they simply couldn't. Could they?

Yes, they could.

Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[drsmithy]

Whoever came up with this idea needs to be slapped. It's not _quite_ as bad as having a close button in every tab (which commits the additional sin of wasting a section of screen space that's already scarce), but it still makes a destructive action (closing a tab) _far_ too easy to trigger accidentally (by clicking _just_ the wrong part of a tab).

Having the tab bar suddenly become scrollable when you open "too many" tabs is another stupid idea. Took me a minute the first time it happened to realise I wasn't seeing a bug (tabs not being created) but a piece of awful UI.

Does it use WMP on Windows by default?

[LiquidCoooled]

'cos if so your internet tracks will not be erased.

I hope someone here is intelligent enough to come up with a sensible alternative or fix which does not involve installing Linux or another OS.

here is the issue, is it a problem?

New Obligatory Question

[JackieBrown]

Is it available for Debian?
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archi ve=no&bug=354622

Re:New Obligatory Question

[Kelson]

Is it available for Debian?

Yes. Just download the Linux version from Mozilla.com and install it.

Hey, you asked whether it was available for Debian, not from Debian....

Re:New Obligatory Question

[baptiste13]

yes, but don't tell anyone, it's top secret^H^H^H trademarked :)

Re:New Obligatory Question

[mverwijs]

> Is it available for Debian?

Sure.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/2.0rc1/linux-i686/en-US

Good luck!

M.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Kelson]

Blame it on conflicting usability studies -- or maybe conflicting usability goals.

Close buttons on the tabs are good from a discoverability standpoint.
A close button on the end is good from a clicking-in-the-right-place standpoint.

Firefox has traditionally given discoverability a high priority.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[miscz]

TabMix Plus dev builds work on new Firefox and you can restore previous behaviour, or whatever behaviour you prefer. It's a bit unintuitive to setup at first but it's a very powerful extension, I can't live without it. I think most people will prefer the new defaults though, it's more easy to understand tabs with close button integrated than having this button far away.

useful tip

[vivek7006]

I found a really useful tip from the article

Unfortunately, the green arrow button is difficult to remove from URL bar, but it can be accomplished by hitting about:config and tweaking the browser.urlbar.hideGoButton, changing it to "true."

Re:useful tip

[hdparm]

Not sure about 2.0 (I suppose it's the same) but you could always do it by opening View-->Toolbars-->Customize window and dragging 'Go' button back into it.

Re:useful tip

[code65536]

If it was, it would not have generated so much attention.

The upside, though, is that the Go button is much smaller and compact than before...

Re:useful tip

[hdparm]

Yes, obviously. That was good tip indeed.

I just installed it and noticed that non-standard tcp ports are restricted by default now (I don't remember this being an issue for previous versions). If anybody needs fix:

in about:config right-click, chose new, string and enter:

network.security.ports.banned.override

and comma-delimited list of ports as a string value.

Re:useful tip

[mmortal03]

Right, the silly thing about removing the green arrow is that it is very useful when you are copy and pasting in an url with your mouse, and then going to that url using your mouse. Sometimes you don't want to have to move over to use your keyboard.

Re:useful tip

[Anonymous Coward]

The go button first appeard in Internet Explorer. Since it is an innovation by Microsoft, it is by definition lame, and hence it must be removed!

Seriously, I think a calm analysis will yield that the go button is useful, many users expect it (FF developers' policy of being kind to former IE users), and at worse it's a benign object.

That said, I'm boycotting Firefox until they add a config for restoring the former key binding of ctrl-enter -> open location bar URL in new tab. That was a change to accommodate for IE users, but a change for the worse.

still has UI consistency/key command problems

[SuperBanana]

I reported this bug years ago and was told "probably won't happen until 2.0" and the bug was promptly closed/ignored:

In most modern operating systems, lists in dialog boxes can have a range of items selected by holding down shift, and individual items flipped on/off with a modifier key that varies slightly; in OS X, it's the apple/command key. Open up the cookies box, a place where selecting lots of items would be REALLY handy (ie, deleting all the crap cookies that will expire in "2046"), and try selecting multiple cookies. Bzzzzt, no go. And guess what? In pre-1.5 versions, you COULD do this, so it really WAS a bug/feature delete with 1.5. Now, select one cookie and hit the delete key. NOTHING HAPPENS. Why the hell not?

If you have partially typed anything in the URL bar and hit tab, half the time you aren't taken to the next text box in the browser window. Similar behavior happens elsewhere, only on a page.

It gets worse: just like older versions of 1.0/1.5, the current release candidate suffers from "keyboard-go-dead-itis." I've had to close Firefox FOUR times today because I could no longer enter text ANYWHERE. Not in forms, not in the URL bar, not in the search bar. Command keys (ie, apple-T for new tab) stopped working as well (1.5 still does this, though now usually only when Flash is on the page. Why Firefox allows flash to intercept command keystrokes is beyond me.)

Oh, and I still haven't figured out how to do the resume-where-you-left-off bit, despite having poured through the prefs pages several times.

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[Michael Wardle]

SuperBanana wrote:

Oh, and I still haven't figured out how to do the resume-where-you-left-off bit, despite having poured through the prefs pages several times.

Tools->Options
Main
When Firefox starts: Show my windows and tabs from last time

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[honor, not armor]

Are you sure it's Firefox that's acting up? I have a similar problem sometimes, but it's always one of two causes:

1) My Dell laptop keyboard, or the external one that shipped with it, is very finicky and has to be hit *just right*
2) My computer has spontaneously switched over to Dvorak again. (I am going to kill my roommate for activating Dvorak in the first place)

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had firefox suddenly lose the keyboard before, while other running programs respond to input just fine. Toggling minimize/maximize usually fixes it though...

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[swarsron]

Which windowmanager do you use? I use ion and i remember something on its mailinglist about firefox and problems with keyboard focus. IIRC then it was a problem with gtk and not firefox

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[Tim C]

1.5 still does this, though now usually only when Flash is on the page. Why Firefox allows flash to intercept command keystrokes is beyond me.

I can only assume that the developers didn't want to prevent Flash from intercepting the key strokes in case they're required by the Flash app.

In any case, clicking somewhere in the window to remove focus from the Flash object generally allows you to use the key commands again.

Re:still has UI consistency/key command problems

[Anonymous Coward]

"the current release candidate suffers from "keyboard-go-dead-itis.""

I have had the same issue on multiple boxes with 1.5, no extensions, Windows OS, and there is nothing I can find outlandish like other's mentioning keyboard/driver/mapping issues. Once this happens, you can right click a textbox on the page, and choose anything in that menu... and it will start working normally. This also happens on pages with no javascript, flash, or images, but it is not predictable.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[PieSquared]

Try right clicking on the "tab" bar. Now click "undo close tab." While I obviously don't like anything that makes me close a tab by accident, and it isn't an excuse for making it too easy to close a tab, it's a really useful feature. All in all while I (personally) don't think this was worth a 2.0 I *do* think it is a big step in the right direction and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't upgrade. It *would* be nice to be able to choose to have a "close" button on the side like it was before instead of the button on every tab. I'm sure there will be an extension to fix it (but it should be built in!). The spell checker is nice as well (extension doesn't end in "tion" as it turns out...). One thing I *don't* like about the spell checker is that it is tending to be a bit... jumpy. It'll tell me I'm spelling a word wrong when in fact I just haven't finished typing it yet (and this while typing at a pretty reasonable speed, I didn't stop or anything. Oddly, I haven't seen this as much when I type slower). The only other real issue I have (so far... 15 minutes) is that there is no defined separation between the page and the tabs. On a page with the same background as the "out of focus" tabs, it's kinda hard to tell where the page ends and the tab begins! Shouldn't there be a slightly different colored border or something?

Has the memory leak been fixed?

[MotorMachineMercenar]

Yes, the one that has been present for as long as I've been using FireFox (2+ years).

Re:Has the memory leak been fixed?

[bunratty]

Firefox 2 fixes lots of memory leaks. There is no big, obvious "the memory leak".

where is it?

[SuperBanana]

Well, I use a lot of invasive extensions, and I only lost Session Manager, which is unsurprising since Fx now includes a similar feature and they would probably step on each others' toes.

Where is it? I've poured through all the menus, all the preference pages...and I can find no mention of it anywhere.

Oh, I see:

It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash.

What about when I want to restart firefox for the fourth time today because I can't enter text into any text fields, or it's sucking up 1GB of memory?

Re:where is it?

[roger6106]

It's under options - main - startup. When Firefox starts: show my windows and tabs from last time.

Re:where is it?

[arielCo]

It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash.

Yes, and I also was thinking of the "reopen recently closed tabs" feature. It was my main use for the extension, since I'm always closing a tab by mistake or when I get impatient with what I'm reading. I'm glad to still have it - too bad I can't reopen windows as I did.

What about when I want to restart firefox for the fourth time today because I can't enter text into any text fields, or it's sucking up 1GB of memory?

I hadn't heard of such a bug with forms, but the memory leakage issue seemed to get a whole lot better somewhere along 1.5.0.x.

Re:where is it?

[z-vet]

What about when I want to restart firefox for the fourth time today because I can't enter text into any text fields, or it's sucking up 1GB of memory?
It's even worse: each time my wallpaper changes Firefox freezes. Or reading some long discussion on Slashdot, especially when i'm in the middle of the page, switching desktop for a moment, then switcing back and see the page scrolled back to the top... I started to hate Firefox for this, but there's no good alternative :(

Re:where is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about when I want to restart firefox for the fourth time today because I can't enter text into any text fields, or it's sucking up 1GB of memory?

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3458/

This extension was written to solve that exact problem. (as have several others, see comments on the extension)

Disclosure: I wrote that one. Or at least, I cobbled the relevant code together. If you look at the bug I referenced you'll see that restart is supposed to be getting some permanent UI in a later release.

Re:where is it?

[Bert64]

That's very weird... i switch desktops regularly and never encounter that problems, i`m constantly switching between up to 10 workspaces, as are many of my colleagues who are all using firefox.
Unless your using some crude hack that tries to implement virtual desktops on a platform not designed for them... a lot of the virtual desktop add ons i saw for windows were such crude kludges that did various things to move other windows out the way.
Alternatively the keystroke your using to switch workspaces might be misinterpreted by firefox, pageup for instance?

Re:where is it?

[z-vet]

I use KDE on Linux. It happens every time i switch a desktop, clicking in the pager with mouse or just with Ctrl+Fn keys. It driving me nuts... I asked on MozillaZine forums and never got an answer. One more reason to make a switch to Konqueror or something. Another thing that happens very often to me: FF's window just disappears. I can see the header and even click the buttons to minimize it or operate it with keyboard, i see an animation effect when it minmizes/maximizes but whole thing is just invisible. Then it appears again like nothing happened. Enough troubles to one to start to think that Firefox is not as good as it promoted.

Re:where is it?

[Bert64]

I have quite a few colleagues who use KDE and firefox, none of them have this problem...

mozStorage (SQLite) and Zotero

[Noksagt]

One of my favorite aspects of Firefox 2 is the new features for developers, including storage with SQLite. This enables neat things like the new Zotero extension, which stores bibliographic data (a'la Endnote, but with automatic recognition of metadata by programs like refbase and on sites like google scholar).

not everyone is able to unpack a zip

[SilentGhost]

Firefox downloads: 226547380 How many of those would do that?

Re:not everyone is able to unpack a zip

[J053]

Probably about as many as would download a Release Candidate vs. a release.

Re:not everyone is able to unpack a zip

[mr_matticus]

If people know how to install skins and can understand why they get an error message when they try to use it, they should be able to handle making a minor modification to a file in a ZIP archive.

I'll bet most of those users have never ventured out of the default skin at all, and those who have primarily use the Mozilla site, which makes version matching very easy.

They don't even give HEAD right...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and because of that they'll rightly never be taken seriously. "Save Link As" has been broken for several versions now. How can you have a browser that can't even send a simple HEAD request? Numerous bug reports have been filed about this, and they refuse to fix it. The irony being that IT USED TO WORK! Then they broke it on purpose and refuse to revert the changes. Go figure.

Re:They don't even give HEAD right...

[HeroreV]

LOL @ the sexual reference

The bug was listed as FIXED quite a while back. Are you sure it's still broken?

Damn it

[d_jedi]

I endorse caution for users that rely on a lot of extensions, as most extensions aren't yet compatible with Firefox 2.0
I thought - at least, based on what people told me at the time - that each new release breaking extensions was supposed to be a thing of the past once FF got out of beta. Hopefully the FF devs fix this.. it's unacceptable.

Re:Damn it

[honor, not armor]

I've been using v2 at work since beta 2, and it's working out very nicely for me. I tinkered with the version number manually in several extensions to make them work with the beta / release candidate before I remembered about Nightly Tester Tools. Anyway, none of the extensions I use were actually broken, they just didn't realize they were compatible with 2.0 yet.

Give it some time, the extension developers have already started bumping the version numbers, and 2.0 hasn't been officially released yet. Or if you're impatient, use Nightly Tester Tools.

Nightly Tester Tools

[Noksagt]

If you're too lazy to bump the maxversion of your favorite extensions, you can use the Nightly Tester Tools to fore the app into thinking an extension is compatible.

Re:Nightly Tester Tools

[TractorBarry]

Given that Firefox is an app specifically designed to use the internet just what the hell are extensions doing having a hard coded "Max Version" setting in a config file ? Why are they not reading this from the 'net ?

Here's how it should work.

1 When an extension first runs get the current "Max Supported Version" from the web. Store this locally.

2 On all subsequent loads of the extension check current browser version against current "Max Supported Version".

3 If the browser version is too high go to the web again to check whether the "Max Supported Version" has changed. If it has update local setting and carry on. If it hasn't then maybe try to load the extension anyway failing gracefully if an error occurs.

Sorry but isn't this sort of behaviour bloody obvious for a web based application ?

Re:Nightly Tester Tools

[foamrotreturns]

There is another extension that allows you to install extensions backwards from your current version - it's called MR Tech Local Install. It also lets you install extensions from your local disk so that you can keep a directory full of your favorite extension xpi files and install them at a moment's notice without having to search Mozilla's addon pages.

Re:Nightly Tester Tools

[TheLinuxSRC]

I agree that a "Max Version" shouldn't be "hard-coded" (it is a text file and editable) however I don't think your solution would work either and here is why:

1). In many circles any software that "phones home" is considered spyware and immediately blocked. Also, just because you have a browser does not mean you are connected to the internet (technical reasons, policy etc...). You may even be "LAN-Locked" on a large corporate intranet.

2). See #1

3). ...maybe try to load the extension anyway failing gracefully if an error occurs. Agreed.

Hard to make more than an incremental improvement?

[StateOfTheUnion]

I have to admit that when I first moved to Firefox from IE, the tabbed browsing was a feature that I didn't know that I needed until I tried it; and then I was hooked.

I don't really hear about any great new must have features in the RC2 version. Though I do acknowledge that coming up with great new features and ideas that most people appreciate but don't know that they need yet is no easy task, but I really don't see any key features in this version of Firefox to make me really want to upgrade. As I said before, great ideas in the browsing experience may be hard to come by since the idea of the browser and its application are mature. It's a bit like coming up with a great new feature for a word processor . . . a lot of the "low hanging fruit" is already taken.

What this means to me is that upgrading the browser is like upgrading the word processor; it's not a very high priority because there isn't a very compelling reason to do it (at least IMHO) . . .

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[auspiv]

to revert back to 1.x style x (where there was only one x on the right hand side) 1. go to about:config in the address bar 2. find Browser.tabs.closeButtons 3. set the value to 3 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s

It's by design

[Anonymous Coward]

Extension developers can specify a range of versions their extension has been tested with. If something changes, there's a good chance they'll need to update the extension to fix it. If nothing changes, they just increment the version support. You can even do it manually if you want.

He says the 'quick-search' is new?

[RincewindTVD]

FTFA
I'm not entirely sure why, but forward-slash now initiates a "Quick Find" which closes after a short period of inactivity and doesn't display the rest of the page find interface. elements

I've been using the '/' key to quick search in FF for ages.. I'm using it now in 1.5.0.7 in fact.

And while I like the new discussion thing, I do notice that the dancing moving comments box on the left (reminds me a bit of the net in 1997 when all menus followed you)doesn't stop at the bottom of the other sections/vendors/help etc area, it sits over the vendors bit.

Re:He says the 'quick-search' is new?

[1point618]

As far as I can tell, the difference is that now, instead of having all the normal, handy options you get with hitting ctrl-f, you now get a blank bar at the bottom that doesn't let you search by capitalization, go to the next search term, etc. I'm waiting for an extension to fix this.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[timeOday]

If we're starting a list of gripes, here's mine: I hate trying to save a download in Firefox.

First, I hate how it defaults to a fixed location (~/Desktop, which means nothing to my wm), and you have to press a button to "Browse for other folders." Next, I hate how there's no decent way to enter paths using the keyboard and tab completion in the dialog box. (Instead it shows the path as a row of buttons!?) I hate how some arbitrary bookmarks, "Home" and "Desktop", are placed above the nonstandard word "Filesystem" which refers to /, the root directory. Next, I hate how long it takes to populate the dialog for directories with many files - e.g. 15 seconds on a 2 GHz Core processor if you visit my /usr/bin which has 1300 files. Finally I hate the download manager which takes up half the screen and shows me all the old files I downloaded long ago.

Why, oh why, could they not just use some relatively normal file chooser dialog box?

Extensions

[slapout]

Why do extensions have to be changed for every release? Does the interface change that much?

Spell Check Only?

[maeglin]

Is the 2.0 designation deserved? I suppose that depends on your perspective. At the risk of veering into a largely irrelevant philosophical rumination on the ontological significance of version numbers, I feel inclined to point out that the implications of version numbers vary greatly between various open source projects. In some cases, there is a well-established nomenclature and version numbers can be used to infer all sorts of useful things about the nature and status of a build. In other cases, it may simply be an arbitrary value selected for the sole purpose of making it possible to distinguish between builds. For Firefox, it doesn't seem like there is a fully consistent version numbering model yet. Rather than expressing disappointment about the lack of new features in the upcoming 2.0 release, users should remember that Firefox release numbers aren't always going to be a helpful medium for establishing expectations.

Sheesh... Judging by the above paragraph it also comes with a thesaurus.

Re:Spell Check Only?

[jZnat]

Yeah, but you need an extension to enable it.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[towsonu2003]

file a bug report, or voice your concern on an exising one... that way, it can change.

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[bunratty]

I'm really tired of leaving up a browser up overnight, and coming in in the morning to find my machine all jammed up because Firefox is sitting on 200+ Meg of memory for a single web page.

When I leave Firefox overnight, I come back the next day and it's using the same amount of memory as the night before. Even after days of continuous use, it's using only about 100 MB of memory, as all browsers seem to do when I use them for days at a time. If you can show how to reproduce over 200 MB of memory use by having Firefox have a single web page open overnight, please do so. Is it some particular page that causes that memory use?

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[caseih]

From what I can tell, you're in the minority. Most users prefer to have the close button on the active tab, and many prefer to have a close button on every tab. I certainly do. I can easily close off tabs I don't want anymore without have to click on each one to raise it to the top first. Also, having a close button on each tab only really works if the tabs are always the same size. That way you can close many tabs just by clicking in the same area. Before with tab size changing this was impossible because the close button (which I had on with an extension) would always change position.

Re:Firefox 2 fixes the most common leaks

[bunratty]

It appears that the more common leaks are fixed in Firefox 2.

Re:Hard to make more than an incremental improveme

[jazman_777]

As I said before, great ideas in the browsing experience may be hard to come by since the idea of the browser and its application are mature.

They're waiting to see what the Opera developers come up with next.

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably their myspace page.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Anonymous Coward]

They should make that option easier to find :( Hell, even present it in the setup. I've seen LOTS of people hate switching that default, so it should be something easy for people to change...

I for one...

[HawkingMattress]

Finally decided to switch to opera today, and i'm quite happy with it so far.
The auto satisfaction of the firefox team, marketing gimmicks and now version number pushing finally got me. Well no, in fact those three are the last straw, the real reason is the total crap that ff has become. I've been moaning about the memory leaks for more than 3 years (no, i'm not talking about the slow as hell cache "feature"), pages take forever to parse and display (it seems like 10x faster in opera, really...), and basically switching to opera gave a new life to my venerable Athlon 1.2 / 500M. On this kind of machine, you can really see the difference... Feels like switching from an interpreted BASIC app to C++ one. In fact when you think about with all the XUL code that sits on top of gecko, it's probably the case...
The only thing I could miss are the developper extensions (which, combined with the inspector are really good), but I'm not into web programming any more for now (happy me !)

Re:I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

The auto satisfaction of the firefox team, marketing gimmicks and now version number pushing finally got me.And you switched to OPERA? Tell me. What revolution did Opera 5 have over Opera 4? As far as I can tell, it was the ads. And Opera 7 over Opera 6? Perhaps some CSS fixes? Seriously. This criticism of the "new Firefox" has been said about Opera for the last six years.

The only thing I could miss are the developper extensions

You do realize that many of these extensions have leaks in them, right? I'm not saying that PEBKAC for you, but it might have.

I'll admit that I usually use SeaMonkey (so have some loyalty to Mozilla), but I don't have qualms about Opera & do have Opera 9 installed & sometimes use it. I just don't like some zealotry (the same can be said for either browser).

Re:I for one...

[Sicnarf]

agreed. firefox is so slow. i don't know if it's all the extensions i used, or bad management of cache/cookies/bookmarks/history. opera, on the other hand can properly zoom images, has full screen mode, proper "page cache", so hitting the back button immediately displays the previous page, unlike firefox. i also prefer the download manager. i have however noticed a crash when loading a java applet (max os x here). also, sadly, opera isn't open source. i've tried sending bug reports to them, but there is no bugzilla or any way to fix it yourself. also i miss some extensions like adblock and for some web development (firebug!). so for casual browsing i use opera, and all other cases firefox.

Re:I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have recently been on a browser kick. I've been using Camino for Mac OS X and have been pretty happy. I decided to give firefox a try and quickly deleted it. It took over 20 seconds to become usable on my G4 laptop (Camino takes about 3 seconds). I tried Opera as well but found it to be ugly, not all that fast (I can't really tell the difference between it and Camino), and to have some strange bugs. For instance, entire tabs will just stop working for no good reason. I'll try to load a page in a tab and nothing will happen. I have to close that tab and open a new one to get it to work. Very annoying. That and a general feeling of slowness every time I use a Google App (mail, calendar, etc...) has caused me to return to Camino.

Re:I for one...

[PurifyYourMind]

I found Opera's built-in adblocking to be wonderful. You can just drag the element you want to block. Simple, intuitive, no extension needed. I recently tried Opera, though, so you may just not have been on the bleeding edge version.

I've been thinking about switching to Opera, because I don't like the way Firefox is headed. The only real barrier is getting used to a different interface.

Re:I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it. Firefox speed has NEVER been an issue for me. I have concluded that you people need to get better machines.

ActiveX support for Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know a priori the full list of ActiveX-dependant websites your users rely on, you could use the IETab extension to solve your ActiveX problem.

The IETab extension allows Firefox to switch between Gecko and the embedded IE rendering engine for any given tab, which naturally enough has full ActiveX support. The extension also allows you to define a filter of pages that are rendered using embedded IE by default - if you preconfigure filters so that all crucial ActiveX-dependant pages are automatically rendered using embedded IE, your users may never notice.

The main problem for casual users would likely be the changes in interface (especially right-click menus) between Gecko-rendered tabs and IE-rendered tabs. They might find this quite confusing.

Re:ActiveX support for Firefox

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

And you inherit all the security holes of IE in FireFox.

middle-click!

[newr00tic]

So, you cant middle-click an inactive tab to close it in Linux; -due to the paste function, or something?

In Windows, you'd just middle-click that tab, and it's gone.

I forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. Hmm, er... where were we?

I'm sorry, the what leak?

-Firefox

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Myen]

Isn't that just the normal GTK2 file browser dialog?

(If it is, press / to start typing... I think. I run Windows here, so I can't test)

Tab changes rock!

[jdbartlett]

Mike, I disagree. I can see where you're coming from, but I for one like having the ability to close a tab without first selecting it.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[MikeFM]

It was possible before anyway. I often did the 'right-click tab..close tab' and it worked just fine without needing to over complicate the UI. Reminds me.. I don't like how Firefox now simplifies the right-click menu on tabs to offer fewer options.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[soliptic]

Even simpler than that actually - you just middle-click a tab to close it.

Close widget on every tab is an absolutely terrible idea, I'd be sure to accidentally close tabs when trying to change tabs. Looks like getting rid of it will be the first thing I do - each and every x.y.z update that self-installs :(

Re:Tab changes rock!

[suffe]

Middle-click is your friend.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[drew]

Take a look at the screenshots. The close button only appears on the currently active tab. So despite all of the problems that everyone else has complained about, the changes still don't solve your problem. (not that it's really that much of a problem currently- it's already possible to close a tab other than the current one with either the right or middle button).

I think I am going to take a pass on 2.0. I don't know of any new features that are particularly attractive to me, and the tab issues are among several that look like major downgrades to me.

(Now, if they would hurry up and implement inline-block already - i mean, hey, it's only been an open issue for over 7 years now - then that might actually be something worth cheering about.)

Re:Tab changes rock!

[PurifyYourMind]

You could already do that via middle-click. Granted, that wasn't a well-publicized feature.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[jdbartlett]

I believe the Firefox development team made the correct decision to build a more intuitive single-click tab closing system. Even though the middle-click feature was documented, it is not intuitive and has limited use for laptop users such as myself (Having only a two-button touch-pad, I have to hold down a key combination to perform a "middle" click). For the general user, right clicking on a tab and selecting "close this tab", while slightly more intuitive than the middle click, results in the same number of clicks and roughly the same mouse gesture as selecting the tab and then clicking close.

As a counter point, Microsoft decided to mimic the current (1.5) Firefox close tab system. This does not mean that it's a friendly user interface (far be it from Microsoft to select an interface because of perceived "friendliness"). It does mean that IE7 users migrating over to Ff2 will have to learn a new close tab system. That will involve some learning curve, as Mike is experiencing, but at least it's a learning curve and not a discovery process.

I can't remember what Konqueror's close tab system looks like (I'm a Ff user even in KDE--it's always the first thing I install on a KDE system!) but I can confirm that Safari (which does not enable tabbed browsing by default) uses the Ff2 system.

Elsewhere in this thread, someone mentioned that in some screenshots they saw of RC2 there was not a close button on every tab. Mike is already aware of this, but here is the explanation (I have been using Ff2 since beta 1): under default settings, "close buttons" appear on every tab unless the user has so many tabs open that there is only 100-odd px or less room for each tab. In that case, close buttons disappear on every tab.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[MikeFM]

By 'more intuitive' do you mean it's dumbed down enough that those people that don't use tabs should be able to figure out how to close a tab if they every figure out how to open tabs? Most novice users I've seen still use either a single window without tabs or multiple windows. Maybe we should make a pop-down menu from every link offering to open in a new tab as the default behavior because it's also more intuitive for novices. Who cares that, like close buttons in each tab, it'd drive experienced users nuts.

Stop dumbing down software. Rather than making it so even an idiot can use it I suggest making it so intermediate level users can work effeciently. I'd expect user's that know how to open and use tabs to also be able to figure out that they can right click on tabs for more options, such as closing the tab, given that everything else in a browser (and most other apps) works that way.

Re:Tab changes rock!

[jdbartlett]

By "more intuitive" I mean "does not require documentation", "more obvious", "apparent", "easier to use", "immediately understandable"...

We already have a pop-down menu from every link offering the choice to either open in new window or open in new tab. You can make "open in new tab" the default behavior from the Tabs section of the Preferences menu.

I'm an experienced Firefox user. Close buttons on every tab do not drive me nuts; I'm grateful for a change that will help new users with tabs. The experienced Firefox user will immediately realize he can still use the other methods of closing tabs as has been suggested in this thread: middle click, right click and "close tab", or (not suggested, don't know why--perhaps not even "experienced" users such as yourself realized this option) "ctrl+w" to close the current tab. If you are actually an "experienced" user, you have no reason to complain. So quit your whining!

Re:Tab changes rock!

[MikeFM]

I think you missed my point that it'd be easier for novies to use tabs if when you clicked (ie left clicked) a link instead of going to the next page it'd first have a drop down that asked how we wanted to open the link. Heck, let's throw in a talking paper clip while we're at it.

Making things more obvious is great until you reach a point where you're cluttering the user-interface. It's already obvious to any user that would know what to do with tabs that you can right-click on things to get more options. It's also obvious that you can go to the File menu to close windows and tabs. The people you're trying to make things easier for aren't going to use tabs any way.

Of course you can still use existing methods to close tabs (although they've made the horrible mistake of removing other right-click options for tabs) but it's simply an ugly and harder to use user-interface design which should never see the light of day. It's not whining to point out that something is a bad decision or at least a bad enough decision that it needs more work before releasing a product to millions of users that'll have to deal with that bad decision on a daily basis. I don't see clear evidence that the new tab system is better and I've heard a lot of other experienced user's complain about it too so I think we should hold off including it in a stable release and give it more development time to try to make something everyone will be happy with.

Mod Parent Up!

[Nasarius]

Excellent, thanks. I always middle-click or Ctrl+W to close a tab, so it was nice to turn off all the close widgets.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[nithinsujir]

I disagree. I love this feature because I can close unwanted tabs without first focusing the tab. yeah, i know you can use middle click, but i prefer this way.

To see more tabs and minimize scrolling...

[mrawl]

To restore your sanity go to about:config and set browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 50. The default value of 100 is a disaster and just about guarantees that awful scrolling behaviour.

Re:To see more tabs and minimize scrolling...

[Tim C]

THANK YOU!

The tabs changes are driving me nuts. I'm sure they're all perfectly reasonable from the point of view of a new user, but as someone who's been using Mozilla since M12 or so it's an utter pain.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Kelson]

First, I hate how it defaults to a fixed location (~/Desktop, which means nothing to my wm), and you have to press a button to "Browse for other folders."

Do you use a new profile every time you launch the browser? 'Cause that's one of those settings you change once and never have to touch again, like setting your home page.

Maybe I should just stop hoping, and file a bug

[Mike Savior]

I kind of find it a little ridiculous that Firefox is one of the browsers that made tabs a hit new feature, yet for it to work in any kind of consistent, sane manner, I still need an extension for it even in 2.0.

Not really looking to start a flame war, but jeez, an addon should not be necessary for this kind of functionality. It makes the default tabbed browsing behavior look half-assed without it.

Re:Maybe I should just stop hoping, and file a bug

[HeroreV]

It's like that with most options. Rather than figuring out a good way to present them to the user, they just hide them. If Firefox continues like this it will eventually have 0 options not in about:config. And further on after that about:config will be abolished and there will be no options at all.

Never change UI on upgrades

[iabervon]

It seems like nobody likes any of the UI changes, which is entirely what I'd expect, because every change to a UI is a major hit to usability. This isn't to say that the new UI might not be more usable for new users. But experienced users will continue to try to use the UI the way that worked before, and it will cause problems for them. This is especially true if the improvement is in discoverability, because experienced users will only benefit in that, when the stupid computer refuses to work like it's supposed to, it's not quite as difficult to figure out what you have to do instead of the natural thing as it might be.

Of course, it's also good to offer improvements to the UI for users who decide to retrain themselves or for new users. But this should be done by adding configuration options (ideally with UI-driven configuration methods, like the Customize Toolbars dialog), and making the upgrade process configure these options based on what used to happen, not based on the current defaults. (Of course, if you're importing settings from a different program, set the options to match the default or configured behavior of that program, not the local defaults.) The ideal is that, when the user gets a new version of the program, everything looks the same as it did before, but new behavior is available when the user decides that it is desireable.

Re:Never change UI on upgrades

[Vexorian]

What I really dislike are aesthetics not really the functionality. Bon Echo Alpha had mostly the same functionality but was really beautiful for me, I can't understand what made them chose such an ugly default theme. Seriously.

New releases vs. major releases

[Kelson]

You're thinking of minor releases. During the 1.0 series, sometimes extensions were broken or disabled going from 1.0.n to 1.0.n+1. This was fixed in 1.5 by adding the extra minor version number and declaring that that number would not change the extension API, and by allowing extensions to specify wildcards (i.e. 1.5.*). So going from 1.5.0.n to 1.5.0.n+1 rarely if ever broke or disabled an extension. (I think there was one release which broke something, and they issued a fixed version the next day.)

Now, going from 1.0 to 1.5, or 1.5 to 2.0, is a bigger leap, and one might reasonably expect change in functions on which extensions rely. So, all the old extensions are marked as being compatible with the 1.5 series, not with 2.0. A lot of extensions have been tested with 2.0 and either marked as compatible or updated to become compatible. A lot haven't.

Re:New releases vs. major releases

[d_jedi]

I'm not extremely familiar with how extensions for Firefox work, but I assume there is some sort of extension API that allows developers to access FF functionality (that seems to be a quite reasonable assumption - it's how it's done almost everywhere else).

Now, the API is like a contract. It says these fuctions are available for you to use, and when you call them, a certain set of things happens and you get a result. The people writing the code to implement the API functions can do whatever they like, optimize/change their implementation as much as they like, so long as the result is the same, and the contract isn't broken.

Further, when the API is extended by new (major) releases, it should not break backward compatibility without a very good reason.

The problem is, I think the FF devs are way too eager and willing to break backwards compatibility. This was acceptable back when FF was prerelease software, but now that it's officially out "in the wild", breaking backwards compatibility should be the last resort. Imagine if the Linux system calls or Windows API functions changed (breaking backwards compatibility) with each new major release - imagine the chaos!

This is a serious problem. Pragmatically, it's not too much of a big deal, so long as all of your extensions are updated by the time the gold version is released.. but what happens when an extension developer decides to stop updating their extension (and this HAS happened, in a few cases I know of..)?

Re:New releases vs. major releases

[BZ]

> but I assume there is some sort of extension API that allows developers to access FF
> functionality

There is some of that, yes. But there are several problems:

1) Parts of this API are not frozen, for various reasons, and hence can get changed. A
    lot of really useful functionality is not frozen.
2) Some extensions use XPCOM APIs that are not really meant for use by extensions; some
    of these are not only frozen but not meant to be frozen -- they're effectively
    internal APIs. Unfortunately, some things are only possible via such APIs.
3) Most importantly, part of the API the extension sees is the exact browser UI. That's
    what the extension overlays its own UI into. Changes to browser UI mean extensions
    can become incompatible. For example, an extension that overlayed the tabbrowser to
    put close buttons on individual tabs would now be broken because there is already a
    close button on the active tab and the internals of the tab bar have changed.

> Imagine if the Linux system calls or Windows API functions changed

Linux system calls don't change much, but have you ever tried writing a kernel driver for Linux? Those break all the time with kernel upgrades...

> This is a serious problem.

That we agree on. The problem is that creating freezable usable APIs is a LOT of work. I don't say this much, but "patches accepted."

SQLite enables new extensions like Zotero

[Augustus De Morgan]

Firefox 2 includes a critical new underlying database engine--SQLite--which enables new kinds of extensions, such as the free, open-source citation manager and digital research tool Zotero.

No sandbox == run ActiveX & get pwn3d.

[Anonymous Coward]

> ActiveX is just an implementation of OLE and COM via the Internet Explorer browser. Anyone is able to write an interface that supports ActiveX controls. The idea that they are inherently insecure is an oft-proclaimed falsehood on Slashdot.

So, allowing random websites--with no sandbox--to control my computer isn't a security matter? You do know that Java runs in a sandbox, right? And that OLE & COM aren't exactly portable to all the OSes Firefox supports.

That said, I do believe that some crazy person made a FireFox extension to embed IE or something and run the wretched things. I don't use it so I don't know any more than that.

Re:No sandbox == run ActiveX & get pwn3d.

[carnifex0]

>> That said, I do believe that some crazy person made a FireFox extension to embed IE or something and run the wretched things.

I believe you're talking about IEView, which is useful for those of us who run Firefox on XP and want to visit sites that just don't work (or don't work as well) in Firefox..

Re:No sandbox == run ActiveX & get pwn3d.

[Andrew Kismet]

There's also IETab, which lets you run IE windows inside firefox tabs. Very useful for web-design, especially doing what I call the "flicker test", rapidly switching back and forth between the two to see the major differences.

Re:No sandbox == run ActiveX & get pwn3d.

[kjart]

FYI, I use Firefox with OWA (Outlook Web Access) all the time. The 'Web 2.0' parts of it dont really work, but I can read my email just fine.

Re:No sandbox == run ActiveX & get pwn3d.

[carnifex0]

IETab, which lets you run IE windows inside firefox tabs

IEView allows the same thing - I wonder how many other 'duplicate' extensions there are...

New Obligatory Answer

[deek]

  Yes

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but does it run linux?

Updating firefox themes is a !@#$

Re:But...

[alphamugwump]

Yeah, I know. Firefox's incompatibility with KDE made me switch to Konqueror. I don't mean to troll, but it is faster and more stable. Unfortunately, it doesn't have all those nice firefox extensions :-(

Re:But...

[z-vet]

Firefox's incompatibility with KDE made me switch to Konqueror. I don't mean to troll, but it is faster and more stable. Unfortunately, it doesn't have all those nice firefox extensions :-(
I feel exactly the same. Switch to Konqueror will be a real pain for me: i use the same profile since FF 0.8, too much passwords that i just don't remember, very long browsing history (i set it to 9999 days) and so on. But i will do it one day, just because Firefox become more and more crap imho.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[timeOday]

If it is, press / to start typing... I think.

Thanks, that helps, although unless I'm doing it wrong, editing the path that way destroys the filename itself.

I suppose it may be the GTK2 file browser. I think they are copying Windows. To me, having all these random location shortcuts everywhere (My Documents, Desktop, My Computer etc) obscures the simplicity of the directory structure as a tree and makes it confusing.

SVG

[bigpat]

Full and native SVG support would be a big feature to have. Sure most big sites would still stay away without IE support, but being able to do flash like things without a plugin and having vector graphics that are xml based and scalable would be enough to entice some smaller sites and application developers to start making some cool applications. Which would spur developement further. So far the basic SVG support that they have has been very good since 1.5, but there is still a lot to do apparently:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/status.html

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I have the same question. I've had this firefox session open for days and it's only using 83MB (ONLY, but.. eh). I've never had Firefox leak that much memory.. I simply don't understand what pages people are visiting that would cause that.

firefox codebase crud

[tomz16]

I know this is heresy here, but....

I have found that firefox has grown less and less stable with each revision. The bugs that I used to submit were very minor and esoteric to the tune of "touchpad scrolling doesn't work well with this synaptics driver revision," etc. Now they are just full out crashes! While the early releases were rock stable, 1.5 for windows crashes all of the time, and frequently decides to just stop resolving DNS after a little while. (I have no extensions, and I've observed the same trend on my laptop and three desktops that I use frequently. All have vastly different hardware and different software configurations. I have to restart firefox at least once a day)

I'm sure that this is mostly due to the complexity of the codebase growing, and I still use it because I can't quite swallow the alternatives right now... but still... firefox has gotten under my fingernail plenty of times this past half year... food for thought... balance between new features and stability, please!

-Tom

Cookie manager functionality loss

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Is there a workaround? The various cookie handling extensions don't look relevant, nothing in about:config seems to bear on it, Google hasn't turned up anything on the obvious search terms. Am I simply missing some way to scroll through a list of cookies and delete a large chosen subset of them, with the option of preventing them from coming back on a case-by-case basis ("case by case" means network.cookie.denyRemovedCookies is too blunt an instrument)?

My CPU got exhausted while playing with infoRSS

[xuejm]

Is there anyone had the same problem.

If you have infoRSS ran in Firefox RC2 , and in some occasion while Firefox is rendering a page, CPU is utilized at 100%.

Are there standards?

[LFS.Morpheus]

While I am a fan of pushing a language forward, Javascript is not your run-of-the-mill language since, to be useful for web developers, it has to be implemented on the majority of clients. Who is pushing Javascript forward (is there a standards body?), and where are the other browsers as far as compatibility/implementation of a particular version?

Re:Are there standards?

[drew]

I believe Internet Explorer 6 and 7 both implement JavaScript 1.4.

Some of the new stuff in 1.7 does look interesting (although I'm not sure how useful), but it is completely useless to pretty much everyone except for extension developers. I'd be far more interested in finally being able to use some of the features in JavaScript 1.5 for regular web development, such as get and set values (properties, for the .Net folks). These features seem much more practical for most web development tasks, and even they are still not available to any serious web developer.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[kevlarman]

actually, they are copying the Mac OS X save dialog.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[bicho]

Having close buttons in every tab had its pros.
When they were there I could close a tab without switching to it. That alone saved me a lot of time sometimes.

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that it's impossible for your browser to grow to more than 100MB? Or that your pattern of usage typically causes the browser to grow only that large?

Imagine a web page that refreshes itself periodically and uses any of the examples in this bug -- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21339 1 (Necko/Gecko needs to enforce a maximum for total size of image/memory cache). One of the sample pages can use almost 1GB on its own!

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Anonymous Coward]

Your bug will be closed as a duplicate of some other bug open since 2001, you will be told that bugs aren't for policy discussions or asking when a problem will be fixed, or you'll be criticized for not contributing code to fix the problem yourself.

How is that more productive than griping here?

What's REALLY missing from the Tabs...

[shoolz]

...is not a close button, rather it's a PIN. Sometimes I would like to pin a really imporant tab down so that I cannot close it unless I specifially un-PIN it. This doesn't even have to take up UI space... a key+mouse shortcut will do such as ALT-Click.

Re:What's REALLY missing from the Tabs...

[scotch]

I seem to recall one of the tab extensions providing a tab "locking" feature, which may be similar to this "pin" feature you dream of.

Re:What's REALLY missing from the Tabs...

[nursegirl]

You will love Tab Mix Plus, it does all that and so, so much more.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[jZnat]

I fucking hate that file dialogue too, but that's an issue with GTK+ (gnome.org, gtk.org). They're the ones who insisted on that piece of crap for a file dialogue for a long time; I hear they de-shitified it a bit in the latest GNOME release.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[HeroreV]

I like how you blame stuff that has nothing to do with Firefox on Firefox. I hate the color of my hair! It's all Firefox's fault!

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[HeroreV]

How naive. See bug 18574.

System themes no longer apply

[jiawen]

From TFA:

Although the new tab theme looks very attractive, it isn't consistent with the computer's default system theme. Visual integration is one of the factors that contributed to Firefox's initial success over the original Mozilla browser suite.

Opera is looking better and better every day... System themes also don't apply in Opera, but at least I get superior speed.

Re:System themes no longer apply

[Slimcea]

Just FYI, Opera has a "Windows Native" theme that picks up the current system theme you're using.

It doesn't look as pretty as most of Opera's themes, but in terms of style integration, it's considerably superior to any Firefox release. Heck, Firefox versions > 1.5 require a CSS hack to get proper menus in Windows Classic mode.

... RC 2 will overwrite your existing installation

[giriz]

*crap* I thought of trying it out. But http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releaseno tes/#install warns that it will replace my existing installation

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I agree. But if you ever get caught out, there's always the undo close tab menu item.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[shutdown -p now]

Close-button-on-each-tab seems to be pretty much standard browser UI these days. Safari was the first to offer it by default I think, then Opera did it, then IE7. It makes sense that Firefox does it by default as well.

Where's it gone!?

[richy freeway]

Since FF2.0, I've been unable to post using ALT + S on various forums. I figure it's cos they've decided to stick a History menu in FF now. Great, very useful?!?

So, I work out how to remove the history menu, hoping I'll get my ALT + S functionality back. No. It doesn't work.

Anyone know how to sort it?!

Re:Where's it gone!?

[Anonymous Coward]

We changed the way keyboard accelerators are handled so that you use a different combo of accelerator keys for chrome accelerators (e.g. "History") and content accelerators (e.g. "Search in vBulletin"). This was to fix the problem where sites could just completely deny you keyboard access to browser functions.

IIRC, by default in Fx2 the chrome accelerator is alt, and the content accelerator is shift-alt. Using about:config you can change what each of these is (but I don't recall which prefs you need to toggle).

Best bug fix in FF 2.0

[deppe]

The finally got around to fixing the bug where FF would consume 100% CPU on Mac OS X when you press and hold the left mouse button. This was a major issue for everyone with a laptop (it goes through battery much faster) and also annoying on the Mac Pros (the CPU fans spin up when you select text).

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14171 0

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[ReinoutS]

Safari was the first to offer it by default I think

Think again. Galeon had close buttons in tabs in the 2000/2001 timeframe, about three years before Safari appeared on the scene.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[shutdown -p now]

Enabled by default? I'm not sure so I'm asking... Opera also had them for a long time, and I have little doubt that quite a few browsers have supported such feature for a long time as well, but only in the last two years or so it became standard.

JavaScript: Prototypes, not classes!

[Stealth Potato]

typing and OOP

Those are pretty much finalized and sorely needed for any webdeveloper who had to hack up their own "extends" or "private/public/protected" conventions (i.e. any JS developer working on more than 30-40 lines of code).

JavaScript is a prototype-based language. If you are trying to write class-like code (extends) in a prototyped language, maybe you should rethink your designs? Between prototypes and lexical closures, JavaScript currently has great support for object-oriented programming; you just have to use it the way it was meant to be used, not the way you'd use Java or C++.

Don't get me wrong; I'm looking forward to class support in JavaScript 2.0, if that ever comes along. I use Mozilla's JavaScript engine as a scripting system for games, so I don't particularly care about the browser and standards issues. The addition of generators in JS1.7 is especially nice for me, since I had hacked in my own cooperative multitasking solution for scripting actor coroutines; my solution worked (it was a higher-order function in JS which produced execution state-managed continuations from functions with yields - a generator generator, if you will ;-), but using theirs will be much cleaner. I recognize I'm in a tiny minority of JS users, though, and your points about standards are valid. Ultimately these features will either have to be accepted as standard (unlikely), or Mozilla will have to completely dominate the browser market (more unlikely), or these shiny new goodies may simply be not worth using for practical web developers.

Still, I have to admit I can be like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to new features. They all look so tasty. :-)

Re:JavaScript: Prototypes, not classes!

[suv4x4]

JavaScript is a prototype-based language. If you are trying to write class-like code (extends) in a prototyped language, maybe you should rethink your designs? Between prototypes and lexical closures, JavaScript currently has great support for object-oriented programming; you just have to use it the way it was meant to be used, not the way you'd use Java or C++.

Tell me how am I supposed to write base functionality and then implement concrete functionality on top of it then, "the way it's meant to be used" versus using extends.

There's no replacement for basic logic that I know of, and prototypes are certainly not self-sufficient for the task, hence all the frameworks extending them to achieve class-like functionality.

Re:JavaScript: Prototypes, not classes!

[Stealth Potato]

A common way is to just use a constructor function that builds a specialized object from a prototype by adding new fields and methods to it. Then you set the constructor function's prototype property to the desired "base" object.

function Rodent()
{
this.isFuzzy = true;
}

function Squirrel()
{
this.gatherNuts = function() { alert("I like pistachios."); }
}

// base each new Squirrel object on a Rodent object
Squirrel.prototype = new Rodent();

This approach is simple enough, and IMHO doesn't need any top-heavy syntactic sugar to make it look or feel like class inheritance.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[Tim C]

Without them, you can right-click on the tab and choose "close tab", or simply middle-click on the tab.

It is absolutely GREAT for me

[liloldme]

There were so many sites that were using some sort of javascript redirect functionality (don't ask me, I don't know javascript nor develop websites), none of them would work with the 1.5.x series (Firefox would just display an empty screen rather than follow the redirect).

I was seeing more and more of these broken web sites (and again I don't know whether it was an issue with FF implementation or wrong use [IE-specific] of javascript) and I was getting desperate considering if I'd move completely back to IE (and I wasn't recommending FF to others anymore because of this same issue).

FF 2.0 RC2 fixes all of that. All the sites I used to have to open in IE now work again, including GMail. So I'm happy. I'll be recommending 2.0 to all the people i know.

And I'm seeing the spell checker in action for the first time I type this. Love it!

Thanks to all the developers who work on this and hope you can keep the regressions at bay!

Re:It is absolutely GREAT for me

[liloldme]

Oh, and the restore session after crash built-in is brilliant (yes it was available before as an extension) whenever my Windows XP decides to crash. Which it just did.

Good job, and keep it up!

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[bunratty]

I'm saying I don't see the memory leak that others are reporting. Most other Firefox users never see it either. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, people who complain about the problem need to explain in detail what the problem is so we have an idea what they're referring to. Remember that even if only 0.1% of the tens of millions of Firefox users see a problem, that's still tens of thousands of people seeing the problem. Just because many people are complaining about the problem, that doesn't mean that we have any clue what they're referring to.

Bug 213391 does have some example pages that use lots of memory in Firefox. This is because Firefox stores all images on the page uncompressed in memory. For pages that have lots of large images, that can take quite a bit of memory. But when you leave the page, the memory is released. If you can demonstrate a way in which the memory is not released, causing a large memory leak, be sure to describe step-by-step how to see the problem, and it can be fixed.

Leapfrogged by IE7?

[dafduc]

I am mostly enjoying IE7's new zoom feature. Mostly - still a little buggy. Anyhow, not seeing anything like it in FF2. Other IE stuff I like better: integrated ultra-simple FTP support (FF hummingbird-stlye extension is okay, but overkill) Ctrl-N behavior: opens you on same page (with history) rather than homepage OTOH, integrated spellcheck in FF2 is nice. For some reason, it doesn't like "okay", though. Sticking with FF2 at home for now, but some zoom would really be sweet. xxxoo, Daffy (long time listener, first time caller)

Re:Leapfrogged by IE7?

[dafduc]

sorry - I'll remember the br's next time.

Can I copy and Paste?

[abigsmurf]

Does this version still have the random clipboard emptying and the dissapearing copy and paste functions?

Yes I know they were supposed to be fixed but I still get them (and my computer is malware free)

Close button per tab

[DaoudaW]

Have they fixed or provided a work-around to the close button per tab problem?

When I tried RC1 this "feature" drove me absolutely batty. All of the other buttons such as go back, go forward, refresh, etc. remain in one place on the user interface, but for some misguided reason it was decided that close tab has to follow the tab. I typically open several tabs at a time then read through them deleting as I go. Having to chase the tab with the mouse is terribly annoying when moving rapidly through search results, news articles or whatever group of tabs I happen to have open. This is especially an issue when I have more than 20 or so tabs showing, which makes the target small and the page title non-existent on the tab.

Re:Close button per tab

[damacus]

Use control-w (or cmd-w if you're on a mac)

Re:Close button per tab

[Sartak]

In about:config, change browser.tabs.closeButtons to:

0 for close button on the current tab only
1 for the new default: a close button on each tab
2 for no close buttons at all
3 for the old behavior: a close button on the far right in the tab bar (yay!)

Re:... RC 2 will overwrite your existing installat

[Anonymous Coward]

That's BS. Just install to a new folder, copy your profile and always invoke the beta with its own profile. I made a desktop shortcut for Firefox beta that takes care of that:

C:\Program Files\Firefoxbeta\firefox.exe -p beta

(You might also want to copy your searchplugins folder over to the beta's install folder.)

Re:What big fat memory leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try leaving Googe News and CNN.com up for a few hours, or days. They both periodically update, and they both cause memory useage to grow out of sight. I usually kill Firefox when it gets over 800k (on a 1GB machine). It is worst on my Win2K machine, but I see it on WinXP as well.

I don't like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like it because they finally changed tabs in a way that conflicts with how I work. I visit deviant art (among other art sites) all the time and have written bookmarklets to open 100 images at once in separate windows (Which Firefox then turns into tabs). With all the versions previous to 2.0rc1 this worked fine. Now it loads a batch of tabs, thinks, then another batch of tabs, thinks, etc etc. It's much slower and it keeps changing focus to the last tab making it very hard to view the images that have already downloaded.

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[towsonu2003]

point taken.

Comprehensive review?

[jopet]

This review does not even mention that e.g. the option for accepting cookies from the original server only has been removed. This is not even mentioned in the release notes. They claim in the corresponding bug it was done because a workaround based on Javascript from other than the original hosts exists, but instead of adding an option to also disable Javascript unless it is from the original host, they removed the option alltogether.
The spell-checker solution is far less than optimal: instead of creating an interface to existing dictionaries users might have, e.g. for OpenOffice, with their own additional words etc. they come up with yet another dictionary.

Bugs

[krod4]

I wonder if they fixed the http://support.microsoft.com/ bug? The one that makes the pages work anyway if you press the scrollwheel..

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh ! AGREED!

[timothy]

I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 right now, with the Bon Echo beta 2, and this bugs me. I really like having the "close open tab" X on the far right, and dislike having it on each tab. Waste of space, waste of mouse movement.

timothy

Re:Close button in the active tab. Argh !

[ReinoutS]

Yes, as far as I know disabling it wasn't even an option.

Learn to use center click!

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to use center click!

With scroll mice, simply press the scroll wheel directly down.

Center click on tab = tab close
Center click on link = open link in tab

Intuitiveness

[jdbartlett]

In answer to your question: no, it would not be more intuitive to have a popup menu display for every link on left click. Here's why:

1. Firefox already has a better system in place: the user can drag the link to a spare spot in the tabs bar, or over an existing tab in order to replace its content.
2. Novice users may not wish to use tabs; however, all users savvy enough to left-click a link in the first place already have some expectation as to what will happen (new content will load). If this does not immediately happen, that expectation has not been met.
3. Both novice and expert users will be frustrated by a system that requires two clicks to follow a link.
4. HTML, XMTML 1.0 Transitional (deprecated) and XHTML "Frameset" website developers all have some say in what should happen when a link is clicked. Browsers typically respect their wishes by opening content in the targeted tab or window. Additionally, some links supply JavaScript in the destination href. Obviously, opening such links in a new tab or window will cause "location not found" errors. Although these scenarios can be worked around to prevent the popup from displaying in such instances, doing so would result in an inconsistent display (sometimes clicking a link would result in a popup choice, sometimes clicking a link would "just work").

Of course, intuition is subjective. "Intuitive" has become a buzzword for good design of late, yet intuitiveness remains the least understood, documented, or researched aspect of application design. If you don't believe me, take a stroll down the computer aisles next time you're in your local B&N/Borders and count the number of books specifically related to GUI design (note: design, as in best practices of layout; books written to provide training in a specific GUI library etc. do not count) vs. other areas of application development (all programming and project management only, if you like). The reason is that it is not a strict science. There are sciences involved, but ultimately we have to "feel" our way toward intuitive design. One warning, though: do not confuse "intuitive" with either "easy" or "helpful". As I explained earlier, intuitive design is both easy and helpful, but neither of those things describe intuitive design entirely.

The multiple close tabs might "clutter" the GUI if you have so many tabs open there is only 100 or so pixels of space to display each tab. Fortunately, the Firefox developers programmed around this possibility: in such an instance, it's obvious the user is more interested in opening tabs than in closing them and, as I've already mentioned, the close buttons disappear on all but the current tab.

No offense intended from the "quit your whining" comment, BTW. You are correct: complaint is the way forward (toward improvement). However, I still strongly believe that the Ff2 close tab buttons are a step in the right direction. Having buttons on the tabs themselves is visually more immediately accessible than a single button off to the far right that is not well connected with any specific tab.