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Firefox 2.0 To Debut Tuesday

An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 2.0 for Tuesday, says the Seattle PI. They give a quick recap of some of the new features, and discuss the ongoing IE vs. Fox debate." From the article: "Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7, its biggest upgrade since 2001. Analysts said IE7 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, but the big question is whether it will stem Firefox's growth at Microsoft's expense. Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

40 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Re:YAY! by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Anyone know if there any significant changes that web developers will have to account for/be able to take advantage of?

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Re:Lies by dvice_null · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When has Mozilla claimed that in innovated tabbed-windows interface? You are quoting Seattle Post-Intelligencer, not Mozilla.

  4. Hey Folks by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

    Hey Folks,

    They're both free apps under Windows! How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare? In fact, if FF were to take over it might actually benefit MS. How? IE has been their worst blackeye of the past couple of years. More problems with than than everything else. If MS could make all the bad IE press go away, don't you think that would be a positive? I realize this is like suggesting to Apple to let Dell build their hardware, but does that make it a bad idea? As long as FF adheres to Open Standards, everyone can compete with web-sites equally with it.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:Hey Folks by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare?

      If all the people use Firefox, there won't be that many IE-only applications. This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems, which usually means that people stop using Microsoft software. Microsoft's strategy is to force people to stick with their system. Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

    2. Re:Hey Folks by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IE is a loss leader, just like the Xbox. they make up by selling other stuff, like devopment kits for activeX applets and other stuff.

      plus it's an anchor to hold people to their products.

      how many people you know have computers only to check e-mail and browse the web ? if all these people switch to firefox, how soon they'll realize they can use FF running in linux, freebsd, mac, etc ?

      what MS wants is joe sixpack to think that "internet == internet explorer" so they can keep shoveling windows on the unsuspecting masses

      --
      What ? Me, worry ?
    3. Re:Hey Folks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If through shifts in market share every popular Windows app becomes crossplatform, then people will realize that they don't need Windows. That would really hurt MS.

    4. Re:Hey Folks by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems

      Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

      Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

      There are plenty of possible reasons:

      * It's easier
      * It lets you do stuff that you consider useful/necessary/cool but that isn't in the spec
      * Not Invented Here syndrome
      * As you suggest, lock-in
      * They're arrogant enough to think they know best and big enough to get away with it

    5. Re:Hey Folks by Omeger · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I highly doubt joe sixpack even knows what linux or freebsd is.

    6. Re:Hey Folks by boron+boy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Listen up, it works like this. If IE had close to 100% market share (as it did in the past) lazy web developers would only develop sites that ran properly when viewed in IE. Now that it has dropped to around 80%, web developers must make their sites compatible with all browsers.

      This means that when I view these sites on my linux machine they actually work! It effectively removes one barrier to switching my OS. Now if only the game companies would release linux versions I could put linux on all my machines.

  5. Re:innovation? by Sporkinum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Opera might be better, and IE might be improved, but as long as Firefox has Adblock and the filtersetG updater, Firefox is the browser for me, my family, and anyone else that wants do do away with annoying (read all) advertising.

    --
    "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
  6. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

    Definitely its memory usage.

  7. Here's hoping. by Grendel+Drago · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hope it won't leak quite so much memory. That'd be nice.

    --
    Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
    1. Re:Here's hoping. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If that was the reason for introducing that functionality, it seems very much like using a bucket to 'fix' a leak rather than, you know, actually fixing the leak.

  8. Market? What market? by jc42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month

    This has gotta be one of the weirder (mis)uses of the term "market". After all, the competing "products" aren't for sale, and a "market" is usually a place where people sell things.

    Of course, it can be difficult to establish a market when the "market leader" does the ultimate price-war thing and gives its product out for free. They did kill Netscape Corp, of course, but somehow they still didn't capture the "market".

    There are some bizarre (bazarre?) economic theories at work here, I think.

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    1. Re:Market? What market? by eMbry00s · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The loss they took from making IE "free" is redeemed by increased/shifted costs in other marketes such as Office and OS. It also kills off competitors that could have made their products portable (and thus migration to other operating systems easier).

    2. Re:Market? What market? by EraserMouseMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I just think it's funny that everybody thinks that IE exists largely to keep people from moving to another OS. As if everybody walks into Best Buy and notices that only the Windows machines have IE and then say, "Oh well, I guess I'll have to buy a Windows machine then."

      Most ordinary users aren't even aware of the browser wars. It's mostly irrelevant to them. As long as they can surf the web they don't give a crap whether they click on a big "E" icon or or an icon of a curled up little fox to get there.

    3. Re:Market? What market? by freeweed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You should go check out a business sometime.

      If I could run every intraweb site/application on Firefox, I could convert my desktop to Linux. If I could run Linux, most of the rest of the company could, too. Most businesses don't play games, use photoshop, or some obscure DVD-ripping software that is only available on Windows. Most businesses are stuck on Windows due to the Office stack (which is getting to be replacable) and IE-based applications. Where the business machines go, the home users will follow.

      Yeesh. There must be 6 highly-modded comments already that all say "home users don't care about the browser, so they'll never switch to Linux/OSX!".

      Sorry folks, you need to get out of the basement more. Home users are unimportant in the big picture, because they never choose anything anyway. They either buy what work uses, or they buy what Best Buy has on the shelf.

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  9. Re:innovation? by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is taking tabs and applying them to web browsing all that innovative anyway? Surely the first program to interface a tabbed interface or equivalent (ie. switchbar), whatever it's purpose, is the true innovator and the first web browser to make use of them was simply "a good idea".

    Tabbed web browsing in itself doesn't seem to be a milestone of great significance. Certainly no more so than tabbed text editing or tabbed image viewing etc.

    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  10. Re:Another reason to use Opera.. by bunratty · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Firefox also lets you decide how much memory is used for caching. The problem is that all images on all currently displayed pages are stored uncompressed in the memory cache, even if the storage exceeds the maximum size you've set. It's not a memory leak, so in practice the memory usage is a problem only when you're displaying pages with lots of large images, but it can cause hundreds of megabytes of memory usage on certain pages.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  11. FireFox still rules by Mike_K · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm a Windows user. I used to think that Firefox used too much RAM - I have about 30 tabs open in 2 windows, and it consumes over 140MB. In my book that's A LOT.

    Few days ago I installed IE 7. I know, installing brand new MS software is a bad idea. But I'm reinstalling this OS soon anyway, so I wanted to give it a try. I opened the same tabs in the browser. Some of them didn't have my cookies, so slightly different pages loaded. But to my surprise, IE7 was taking up over 400MB of RAM. That's almost 3 times as much as Firefox. It got sluggish compared to Firefox. (I have a gig of RAM in a decently fast computer)

    I'm sticking with Firefox. I'll test out 2.0 when it comes out, and baring bugs or bloat, I'll be using it as my main browser on all 3 computers I use.

    m

  12. Re:innovation? by edmicman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How do you use your router to block ads? Does it actually supress/remove ads, objects, iframes, etc. from the webpage, or does it just block the item from loading, giving you a red X or whatever on the webpage? Is it easily updateable? Can you right click on something that got through and have it added to the list? I have a WRT54G if that helps...

  13. Excellent by edmicman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So 2.0 drops on Tuesday, and the biggest topic /. has to discuss about it is whether or not Mozilla actually pioneered tabbed browsing or not? Come on....

    I've been using the 2.0 betas since they were publicly available, and have to say it's a big improvement. The individual tab closing button (it's nice...just give it a shot), the spell checking, improvements in the preferences interface....all around, a very nice job!

  14. Re:innovation? by cheater512 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Firefox has a good blend of features out of the box. Just because its customisable doesnt mean you have to customise it.

  15. Re:innovation? by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've use it but it's a memory hog and slows the browser down. ...use your router to block ads.

    My desktop PC is just a touch more powerful than my router, even ignoring all the other reasons I'd want to block ads from within the browser.

  16. Re:innovation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    hosts file can only block whole domains, and does not collapse the html to hide where the ad was. no dice

  17. Re:innovation? by Arker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sadly, Opera won't either, unless you're on Win32. Which is why I use firefox now, as I no longer use Windows on any machine. Back in the days when I still used Windows, however, I considered Opera the best browser. Particularly version 3.62 IIRC, which could be fit entirely on a floppy disk.

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    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  18. Re:I'm a web developer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You're writing HTML. You don't "support" any browser. Browsers support what you write.

    There are these things called "standards", if you didn't know. From what I hear from "web developers", most do not. Look them up. Here, I'll even give you a URL: http://www.w3.org/

    Now stop coding "for a browser" with overly complex garbage and code for standards. If it breaks a browser, that's the browser's goddamn problem. Tell your users to go where the standard lies, which is, generally, the latest Firefox.

    I hate to respond as AC but this is admittedly a trollish response. However, it has to be this way because I'm really tired of "web developers" griping about how different browsers do things differently. Code to the standards and let the browsers come to you, not the other way around.

  19. Re:innovation? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only thing that makes me like Firefox more than Opera is the idea of Extensions. The fact that the browser can be enhanced by the users creates a big advantage in my mind. I wouldn't want all those features built into the browser, because it would be huge and bloated, and there's a lot of extensions that without them my life would be a lot harder. The web developer extension makes my life so much easier, but i'm sure that 99% of internet users in the world would have absolutely no use for.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  20. Re:innovation? by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Blocking at the proxy only makes sense when you want to attempt to protect a network of users. To protect your browsing session, it's much simpler and much more comfortable to use adblock. Clicking on something and clicking "block this" certainly is much more straightforward than poking around the page source and then adding a rule somewhere.

    Unless they've added something to routers recently that I'm not aware of...

    --

    May contain traces of nut.
    Made from the freshest electrons.
  21. Re:innovation? by FLEB · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If it's the close buttons on every tab, set browser.tabs.closeButton to 3 in about:config.

    --
    Information wants to be free.
    Entertainment wants to be paid.
    You just want to be cheap.
  22. Re:innovation? by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.

    Every competitor except IE, Mr. +5 Informative.

  23. Re:YAY! by Mercano · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gah. With proprietary CSS extensions, they all have the moz prefix. Why couldn't they have taken advantage of XML\XHTML's namespacing features and put the attribute in its own namespace (i.e. moz:spellcheck). For what its worth, though, been using the FF2 betas/RCs for a while, and I love this feature.

    --
    #include <signature.h>
  24. Re:I'm a web developer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "Code to the standards and let the browsers come to you, not the other way around."

    Users don't care about standards. Users only care about the pretty pictures on the screen. If the pretty pictures look goofy, the users will be unhappy and you won't get paid.

    I'd rather get paid for writing ugly HTML than not get paid for writing beautiful HTML that looks ugly in the browser. People do not pay for quality HTML. They pay for results. Standards based HTML is (unfortunately) not the way to get results.

    I'd starve if I waited for the browsers to come to me. Please, leave your mother's basement and get a real job. Then you'll understand what the adults are discussing. In your fantasyland, perhaps coding to standards is more important than how it looks on the screen. In the real world, screen appearance is everything; source view is nothing.

  25. Re:innovation? by Siberwulf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.

    You're a whole new brand of naive if you think that FF is more compatible out there than IE. While IE may not be compatible with the hardcore standards, it is more compatible with websites, since those websites know the market share, and specifically cater to IE.

  26. Re:YAY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But if you are a writing web pages for say Slashdot with over 60% FF users then it's worth catering to.

  27. Reason to remain on Windows by Udo+Schmitz · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

    As long as there are web sites that are built for IE (important stuff like online banking) this is a reason for people to stay with IE and Windows. I hear it all the time. As IE looses more marketshare, companies are compelled to think about shutting out potential customers. That will lead to their web sites being compatible to web standards. That will make one less rason for people to switch away from windows. That again will lead to some chair throwing in Seattle.

  28. IE7's Zoom / Magnifier.. by Chicane-UK · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've now used Firefox exclusively for about a year and a half and as far as i'm concerned Microsofts neglect for IE for so long means that on principle alone, i'll never go back.

    But I do some website testing and as a result felt it was in my interests to install IE7 now that it is released and see what its like.

    Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?) but the one thing I do really like is the new magnifier feature for web pages. It just works really rather well and seems to handle most pages well.. and doesn't break formatting at all on any site I tried it on. It even scaled up Flash movies to 400% without making my machine die on its backside.

    So certainly for people with sight issues, it'd be hard not to reccomend!

    --
    "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
    1. Re:IE7's Zoom / Magnifier.. by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?)

      One could say a similar thing about FF 2.0.

      Restore session after crash and individual tab closing buttons - both have been in Galeon for some time...

      While true innovation is admirable, improving by learning from others is also a good thing. The users benefit, the "ecosystem" is improved overall.

      Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

      --
      A house divided against itself cannot stand.
  29. Re:I'm a web developer by Spliffster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    i can code to standards and add a few hacks for IE and still get payed. Maybe you just want to leave out the browser specific bullshit like document.all..., ...>, etc. and start creating pages which degrade greacefully if the client's browser doesnt support all the bells and whisles (read xmlhttprequest for example).

    On the other hand, i would certainly make more money when IE7 comes out and i could remake all the sites for "the new browser" (as long as the customer would understand the need).

    Cheers,
    -S