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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."

103 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. innovation? by minus_273 · · Score: 5, Informative

    geez, "tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated" that is beginning to sound like microsoft innovation. Long before firefox existed, I was using tabbed windows in opera. Give credit where it is due.

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
    1. Re:innovation? by Xymor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And I've been using since 1997 with IE

    2. Re:innovation? by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Informative

      So, to whom should the credit go to?
      "Web browsers are notable for implementing this kind of interface (called tabbed browsing). BookLink Technologies pioneered this interface design in its InternetWorks browser in 1994"
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing

    3. Re:innovation? by unixmaster · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was first introduced in NetCaptor browser, more history here.

      --
      Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
    4. 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"
    5. Re:innovation? by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      BeOS had tabbed-windows system-wide since it was released. What year was that? It also had to be around 1994 or so...

    6. 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.
    7. Re:innovation? by AcidArrow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Are there better browsers out there? Again, without question.

      May I ask what are those other browsers you're talking about? I am aware of 4 major browsers other than Firefox. Let's have a look at them and how they compare with firefox.

      IE7 - It finally got tabs and a search box but still has crappy html and css standards support. Actually it's a little worse than MyIE for IE6. I'll pass.
      Safari - Has a lot the basic features of a good browser and is very simple. Respects HTML and CSS standards. Has crappy PNG support (gamma correction) and for some reason scrolls slowly even on fast machines. It's a fine browser but I prefer Camino.
      Konqueror - Although I have limited experience with this one, it looks like a good browser/file manager, but I am un-aware of any features (appart from passing that ACID2 test) that make it better than Firefox.
      Opera - The only browser that is at least feature-wise better than firefox. But for some people Open Source actually matters. Though even with that into the equation, I can't really say which one is the better browser.

      So, while you can argue and I might accept that opera is better than firefox, what are the other browsers that I've been missing that are better than the "overrated" firefox? Oh, and preferably opensource.

    8. Re:innovation? by jZnat · · Score: 4, Informative

      Konqueror comes with AdBlock built-in, so that's an instant win in my book. It's fast, integrates with my desktop (unlike Firefox), and even has a few extensions of its own.

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
    9. Re:innovation? by elcid73 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Opera can block ads just fine. May not have all the bells & whistles, but I get along just fine with the content blocker that's built in.

    10. Re:innovation? by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 4, Informative

      You beat me to it. Seriously though, firefox is highly overrated. Is it better than IE6? Without question. Are there better browsers out there? Again, without question.

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

      I'm a power user. I routinely switch between Camino, Safari, Firefox, and IE under CrossOver as I'm browsing different sites and designing web pages. But for my friends who aren't power users and want something that "just works", I always recommend Firefox. It's safer than IE and has a few nice features that they'll appreciate, but is still simple and most importantly, is going to work on 99% of the sites they visit. Safari, Opera, Konqueror, and others all have compatibility problems.

    11. 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...

    12. 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.

    13. 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.

    14. Re:innovation? by Plutonite · · Score: 2, Informative

      You were using the IE engine inside a 3rd party browser, not the IE browser provided by Microsoft. I also made my tabbed IE-based browser years ago, and thousands of apps use the IE active-X object to display HTML.

      In other words, point doesn't apply here.

    15. 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.

      --
      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
    16. Re:innovation? by gerrysteele · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.privoxy.org/ is the best way. I use it on my router.

    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. 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.
    20. Re:innovation? by robzon · · Score: 2

      The fact that you don't use it doesn't make it unimportant. I can do very fast switching between tabs with alt+number which is VERY convenient and much MUCH faster than flipping thru windows with alt+tab. Tabbed browsing is what I miss the most when I have to use a Windows box (unless there's firefox installed :)).

    21. Re:innovation? by VertigoAce · · Score: 4, Informative

      In case anyone wants to do the same on IE 7, the shortcuts are:

      Switch between tabs
        CTRL+TAB or CTRL+SHIFT+TAB

      Switch to a specific tab number
        CTRL+n (where n is a number between 1 and 8)

      Switch to the last tab
        CTRL+9

    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:innovation? by Bronster · · Score: 4, Funny

      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

      Your signature is just so... um... I won't use that I word that Alanis poisoned. No, no, I won't.

    24. Re:innovation? by BarkLouder · · Score: 2, Funny

      I've had tabbed browsing in my file cabinet for 50 years!!!!

    25. Re:innovation? by shakey_deal · · Score: 2, Informative

      Install Quicksilver for OSX and you can get this for any browser. Everything will sort of auto complete like opening programs, just type in the first few chars, find email, contacts etc. like spotlight on crack.

    26. 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.

    27. Re:innovation? by rHBa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hmm...

      That's the same shortcuts as FF1.5

    28. Re:innovation? by erroneous · · Score: 2, Funny

      Int(Rnd*UBound(tabs))

      --
      erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
    29. Re:innovation? by neersign · · Score: 2, Funny

      For me, women create pop-ups. Some times it can be quite embarrassing, but most of the time we both enjoy those pop-ups.

    30. Re:innovation? by Digitalwingx · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, it's more like the majority of the websites are developed to accommodate IE, not because IE has better compatibility.

  2. Tuesday? by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tuesday? The day when security patches for IE are released?

    1. Re:Tuesday? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe they're saying Firefox is the ultimate security patch for IE? :^)

    2. Re:Tuesday? by electrosoccertux · · Score: 5, Funny

      Firefox _is_ the security patch for IE.

    3. Re:Tuesday? by Dracos · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why not? People used to say that Service Pack 6 for NT4 was RedHat.

    4. Re:Tuesday? by wertarbyte · · Score: 5, Funny

      Indeed. Internet Explorer is a fine browser, I use it all the time on a new windows installation - to download Firefox.

      --
      Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
    5. Re:Tuesday? by antdude · · Score: 2, Informative

      I doubt any updates are coming out on the fourth Tuesday of the month. I don't recall seeing any MS Bulletins about upcoming update releases either.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    6. Re:Tuesday? by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Myself, I can't even bring myself to start IE, so I download my copy of firefox with the command line ftp client for windows.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    7. Re:Tuesday? by funfail · · Score: 3, Informative

      There was already a (real!) SP6 for NT4.

  3. Re:Lies by ricree · · Score: 2, Informative

    It depends on whether this was due to misstatements by mozilla people, or if it was just a stupid writer. Never underestimate how ignorant journalists can be.

  4. Minimum tab size by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the annoying things about the new firefox interface is you can't have as many tabs in the bar at once anymore. Sure, it has a scrolling interface, but I liked the sort of spatial representation of the old system. Is there a way to change the minimum size of the tab headers in the new firefox?

    1. Re:Minimum tab size by christopherfinke · · Score: 4, Informative
      s there a way to change the minimum size of the tab headers in the new firefox?
      Set browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 0 (or whatever you want) in about:config.
    2. Re:Minimum tab size by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes there is. You can remove the close buttons from the tabs (make it look like it was in 1.5) and also tell the min width for the tabs:
      http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s
      http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

  5. MDI by jonasj · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not that it matters who came first, but Mozilla did actually have tabs earlier than Opera. What you were using in Opera back then was actually MDI, not tabs.

    But of course other browsers had tabs far earlier than any of these two.

    --
    You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
    1. Re:MDI by Esine · · Score: 2, Informative

      Opera still doesn't have tabs. It has an MDI interface and it calls the subwindows "pages", not tabs.
      Newer versions of Opera also have a restricted MDI mode that's similar to Mozilla tabs.

        -- dbg

    2. Re:MDI by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 2, Informative

      Um no.. they're talking about tabs. MDI != Tabs. Windows 3.1 had MDI but it didn't have tabs.

      MDI is very unintuitive on its own - tabs make it much better by putting, well, a tab on the page so you know it's there.
      Closest analogy is Windows 95 property sheets I guess, although they weren't the first (just the first that most people will have used).

    3. Re:MDI by Fweeky · · Score: 2, Informative

      "MDI is very unintuitive on its own - tabs make it much better by putting, well, a tab on the page so you know it's there."

      Tabs being in such a case buttons linking to the child windows. Hmm, I'm pretty sure Win 3.1 supported buttons ;)

    4. Re:MDI by hkmwbz · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, Opera has "tabs". Whatever it's called it's the exact same concept: Click a button on a toolbar to switch to that page. Just because they didn't look like tabs doesn't mean that they actually worked differently. You clicked a button to switch to another child window. That's what tabs do.

      --
      Clever signature text goes here.
  6. 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.

  7. 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 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.

  8. Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by JavaManJim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its Sunday after all right now, so why not pray for FireFox? This is FireFox 2.0 Beta running on my Windows XP PC.

    1. Starts without maximizing itself to the full PC screen area. Always leaves space available. In contrast SeaMonkey correctly occupies the full PC screen area when starting (but SeaMonkey makes me create a new profile except for once.). FF thinks its full screen according to its maximize/window button but is mistaken.

    2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine.
    http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

    Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

    Thanks,
    Jim Burke

    1. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not suffered from 1, but then I just bought a HUGE screen, running full screen browsers on it, is fascicle. On point 2, it's not antiquated it's constantly being improved, just the stable releases of the engine are behind the bleeding edge you can get hold of one which can pass Acid2 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/), but the rendering engine might crash on you.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by dvice_null · · Score: 4, Informative
    4. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by bunratty · · Score: 4, Informative

      Good news... There are several reports that Firefox 2 uses less memory than IE 7. Only a small percentage of users ever had problems with memory usage to begin with.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    5. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by WWWWolf · · Score: 2, Informative
      2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine. http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

      Um, acid2 represents one faction's idea on what an ideal, future-proof CSS implementation should do. It's not be-all end-all test of absolute must-have features of CSS. Gecko doesn't fall too far from the goal, and rest assured they're working on the issues.

      Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

      I'm not using the beta yet. Um... I would terribly appreciate it if middle-click would do nothing. Currently, on Linux, middle-clicking goes into the URL that I have on selection buffer. Middle click gets clicked by accident awfully often when scrolling and I end up staring at http://www.whateverthecrapihadonclipboardwhenmymou seslipped.com/ (see below).

      Um... seems like this can be fixed in about:config. middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false. I think. Didn't know this. Very cool.

      Another beef is the automatic expansion of example => http://www.example.com/ which just gives me bunch of false alarms. If I find myself looking at http://www.whateverthecrapihadonclipboardwhenmymou seslipped.com/, I'm going to scream. While I'm at it, it shouldn't even assume I want http:/// there; it should demand full URLs. And above the heck all, if I want to use this as a search engine, I type "g (keywords)", not the plain address - I don't want a search bar, I don't want an intelligent search bar;I just want an ordinary address bar that also has this keyword support thing. Is it too much to ask?

      I think this is at least the latter is somehow fixable through about:config, but I forgot the instructions (didn't try it at first because it appeared to have side effects). Setting keyword.url = about:blank, keyword.enabled = false has little effect...

    6. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by Threni · · Score: 5, Funny

      > Wait for Firefox 3, when the rendering system will be given a major overhaul.

      And that's just *nothing* compared with all the goodness we're putting into Firefox 4! Why do it now when you can wait a few years?

    7. Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement by JudgeJackson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Better zooming is at the top of my wishlist. Opera and IE7 have both implemented zooming nicely - I hope Firefox will do so as well.

  9. Re:YAY! by aymanh · · Score: 5, Informative

    The changes are nicely summarized in this page.

    I find "Client-side session and persistent storage" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future. There are also JavaScript 1.7 which makes JavaScript more Pythonic, SVG support, and several other features.

    --
    python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
  10. Re:YAY! by From+A+Far+Away+Land · · Score: 5, Funny

    With the built in spell checker, I expect about 12% of the web's users to look smarter by at least 50% on Tuesday, with the number expected to grow as Firefox spreads.

  11. TabMixPlus RC by skoval · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've just checked.
    RC1 of new TabMixPlus version (with FF 2.0 support) is already available.

    Good news for me.

    --
    I choose friends for sigs
  12. But where can I get my IceWeasel 2.0 ? -- NT by zeenixus · · Score: 4, Funny

    But where can I get my IceWeasel 2.0 ?

    --
    In Bob we trust.
  13. 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 iabervon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Legend has it that it won't matter, because if it's using too much memory, you can just restart it without losing what you're in the middle of.

    2. 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.

  14. FACT: OPERA DID NOT INVENT TABBED BROWSING! by Sir+Homer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. Stop spreading the myth.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing

  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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

  18. Re:YAY! by ilovepolymorphism · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With the new spellchecker they will also be introducing a new attribute to the input tag: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Controlling_s pell_checking_in_HTML_forms Is this a non-standard attribute? Are we going back to each browser adding stuff and hoping the other one stays relatively compatible? I'm not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing. I was just curious.

  19. Re:YAY! by Julia+Cameron · · Score: 4, Funny
    With the built in spell checker, I expect about 12% of the web's users to look smarter by at least 50% on Tuesday, with the number expected to grow as Firefox spreads.

    U ar right.

    --
    Julia Cameron
    Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
  20. 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!

  21. Who cares? by swillden · · Score: 2, Funny

    Let me know when IceWeasel 2.0 is out. Now *that* will be a great browser!

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  22. Re:IE 7 Quick Tabs by imbaczek · · Score: 2, Informative

    foxpose has had it since, um, I can't remember. I'm pretty sure Opera has this built-in, but don't take my word for it.

  23. I'm a web developer by suv4x4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For me the big question as such is:

    should we care to support Firefox 1.5 now?

    We know we'll have to support IE6 for years to come, even IE5. But Firefox users typically upgrade their browser quickly.
    So: do I check my sites in FF 1.5? Do I even keep it?

    Before you tell me "but they all render perfectly and the same": it's not true. I keep Firefox 1.07 for this reason here, since it handles quite a bit of elements/CSS in a different manner (even clearing floats differs a little in some cases).

    There's also lots of bugs fixed in 1.5, but not in 1.07. And there's also new oddball behaviours in 1.5 not present in 1.07...

    FF has 10% market share. I'm just split if it's worth it going into so much detail.. maybe I'll just support 1.5 for a few months and move to 2.0.

    Please share your opinion.

    1. Re:I'm a web developer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The 1.x branch of Firefox used Gecko 1.7
      Fx 1.5 uses Gecko 1.8
      Fx 2 uses Gecko 1.8.1, so a much smaller change (as in no new feature in HTML/CSS, just bug fixes I think). The new features are in SVG (textPath support), JavaScript (1.7) and Client-side session and persistent storage
      Fx 3 will be the next big jump to Gecko 1.9, with the reflow that will fix Acid 2 and incremental layout bugs, plus more CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 support.

    2. 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

  24. Re:IE 7 Quick Tabs by gozar · · Score: 3, Informative
    The IE 7 "Quick Tabs" feature is very cool. It shows a tiled view of all tabs open with all pages rendered so you can quickly find your way and click a tab. I don't think any previous web browser has this feature.

    Omniweb has had it for a little while, here's a screenshot.

    --
    What, me worry?
  25. Konqueror is rock solid and light on resources. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Besides having far better CSS support than Firefox 2.0, Konqueror also uses only a fraction of the resources. Opening the exact same sites in Firefox and Konqueror will often show a major difference between the two in terms of RAM usage.

    For example, when I simultaneously open about 15 of the blogs and websites I read daily, top reports Firefox 2.0 rc3 as using 149 MB of virtual memory. Konqueror, on the other hand, uses a cool 28 MB for those exact same sites. Opera uses 31 MB. So as far as I can tell, Firefox is the lame duck when it comes to effective memory usage. This is with a build right from mozilla.org, without any additional extensions installed. I also disabled the cache for all three browsers, since I've heard that Firefox has a policy that leads to excessive memory usage.

    A problem I have had with the Firefox 2.0 release candidates is crashes. This doesn't happen with Konqueror, or any other application I'm using, so I doubt it's faulty RAM. These crashes aren't easily reproducible, and I frankly don't have the time to bother debugging an application that I really don't use, and that crashes the few times I do try it out.

    1. Re:Konqueror is rock solid and light on resources. by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Opening the exact same sites in Firefox and Konqueror will often show a major difference between the two in terms of RAM usage.

      'course, it helps that Konqueror can leverage a ton of the infrastructure already present in KDE, and as such, it's actual resident set size can be much lower (since many more of the libraries it utilizes will be shared with other apps).

      The question is, how much total RAM is that monster KDE desktop taking up?

      Of course, if you're using KDE already, then you're absolutely right, konq will be a better choice if your goal is to reduce memory footprint. However, for folks such as myself (I use WindowMaker), there's probably little advantage to using one over the other.

      I also disabled the cache for all three browsers, since I've heard that Firefox has a policy that leads to excessive memory usage.

      Actually, that's incorrect. What you want to do is disable the fast back/forward cache. It is controlled by a property called "browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers". Set that value to 0 to disable the feature. This can significantly decrease the amount of memory used by FF at the expense of slower back/forward response.

  26. full screen by chocolatetrumpet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IE can go full screen - and I mean full screen. Even the toolbars autohide up into the top of the display.

    Firefox has always left the toolbars around to eat up valuble screen real estate. The application goes full screen, but not the web page.

    If firefox wanted to 1-up IE, they could make the toolbars autohide, and then even make the scrollbar autohide. Then it would be true full screen. How's that for marketing speak?

    But in all honesty, this is a feature I would enjoy.

    --
    Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
  27. IE7 is horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The inteface is crappy. I installed it and asked my wife to use it. She was frustrated in 5 minutes. No menu on by default. No favorites on by default. The bookmark manager is bad.

    What the hell was MS thinking? IE7 doesn't touch Opera or FF.

  28. The elephant in the room... by William_Lee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am a big fan of Firefox in terms of philosophy and features, but have been driven to Opera (which I actually prefer for most things) due to the ridiculous amounts of memory that Firefox consumes. With multiple tabs open, I can routinely see Firefox over the course of a day or two of remaining open consume upwards of 900K, and it will continue to grow until it is shutdown and restarted. This is a serious issue for many Windows Firefox users, and the developers seem either unwilling or unable to focus on fixing it. This should have been the number one priority for version 2 in my opinion. It results in a shoddy product that would be unacceptable in a commercial application. Why is it that this elephant just sits in the room while FF developers pretend it's not there. Restarting an application should not be the solution to any problem, let alone one this serious. It's widespread and should have been addressed a long time ago!

    1. Re:The elephant in the room... by freeweed · · Score: 2, Funny

      I can routinely see Firefox over the course of a day or two of remaining open consume upwards of 900K

      Yeah, 640K should be enough for any web browser!

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  29. Summary Is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Opera pioneered tabbed browsing, not Mozilla.

    You just put egg on your face with that comment because clearly Mozilla copied that idea from Opera. Is it OK for Mozilla to copy but not MS?

  30. Re:YAY! by gamefreak1450 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I find "Client-side session and persistent storage" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future.
    Probably not too many, seeing as how web developers rarely cater to the ~10% of users that use Firefox. Personally I like the features and standards-compliance of Firefox, but the fact that 90% or so people still use IE haunts me.
  31. 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>
  32. Firefox 2.0 Themes by aplusjimages · · Score: 3, Informative

    They already have Firefox 2.0 themes out.

    --
    Can I bum a sig?
  33. Re:YAY! by bwilson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is this a non-standard attribute?

    We wanted web pages to control the spellchecking defaults to some degree. For example, webmail applications will want to automatically turn it on for subject lines, even though it is normally off for <input> elements.

    We discussed with the WHATWG web standards group to come up with the attribute. I'm not sure about the status of this in any of their specs, as I'm not sure there was any strong consensus. That's one of the problems coming out with a new feature not currently supported in any other browser or mentioned in any standards.

    - Brett (Firefox spellcheck contributor)
  34. Re:YAY! by zmotula · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry for offtopic, but adding a new attribute that controls the spell checker reminded me of two similar functions. I would like to have a system solution for disabling text selection (because selecting web application interface is dumb) and disabling text completion for input boxes (because for some boxes the completion simply does not make sense). You might be familiar with this -- does WHATWG work on something like it?

  35. 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.

  36. 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.
  37. Re:Another reason to use Opera.. by slashdotmsiriv · · Score: 2, Informative

    Browser cache is always committed to disk. You may have a problem with firefox memory consumption if u never shutdown ur browser. Perhaps in this case it allocates more memory for cache that is not committed to disk unless ur disk space limit is large enough. I doubt it though. But if u restart it it never brings more than X MB cache in memory, actually it brings much less, depending on which pages u actually visit. So in this case, disk memory has pretty much the semantics of RAM and this is why the developers dont differentiate between the two.

  38. Re:YAY! by namekuseijin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    hello? eXtensible in XML techs is there for a reason, ok? If a browser doesn't understand a particular tag or attribute, it simple ignores them, like they've been doing for the past decades. Browsers which understand the meaning will provide a better experience.

    It's not like people were getting a hard time with IE6, despite it's handicapped CSS handling, for instance.

    --
    I don't feel like it...