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Firefox 2 Launch - Interview With Chris Beard
ReadWriteWeb writes "This afternoon Firefox 2 will be 'officially' launched. In anticipation of the unveiling, ReadWriteWeb has a brief interview with Chris Beard — Mozilla Vice President of Products. Subjects discussed include the growing enterprise usage of Firefox, the importance of user experience and security, Mozilla's theory behind Web feeds and why they haven't included an integrated RSS Reader, the growing add-on ecosystem, offline browsing, and finally a little about the future of the browser." From the article: "It felt to us like a 2.0 product, particularly if we looked at it from what 1.0 was, to 2.0. It was like half steps, from 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0. It's also a very stable and rock solid release - it's really ready for the masses. So it really does feel like a 2, as opposed to a 1.x product. Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn't just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues. But there's certainly a lot in it which makes it really solid." Also on the site is a concise review of the product, and an overview of Marketing Firefox 2.0.
can't wait for firefox 3! Sam
I've been using it since yesterday since Mozilla had it posted in their pub directory. :( But I like the new look and feel to it, plus it uses quite less memory.
So far, so good. I was upset my Daily Dilbert and FastFirefox Extensions weren't compatible though.
Good job Mozilla!
Is that like half of a hole? Or is that what you call it when someone lifts their foot off the ground and then doesn't set it back down?
That it is as fast or faster than the current release. I am always fearful lately of new releases as they typically mean slower and bloated.
I even recently downgraded all the office machines to Office 2000 from office 2003 as the minimal feature benefits do not outweigh the increased speed in loading and operation as well as far smaller memory footprint.
I love how they put an X on each tab and the tabs automatically resize after a certain number of tabs is added / removed. Every time I try to switch tabs I accidentally close one and every time I try to close more than one tab I accidentally switch to the second tab instead of closing it. Maybe I'm blind and there is a way to switch back to the old tabbing system? This one blows though IMO so someone please enlighten me! Or do I just revert to 1.5?
because that would be nice
Yesterday's false start and the Firefox team's request to calm down reminds me of the Stoning scene from Life of Brian. I'm sure someone can paraphrase this to relate it with downloading:
Jewish Official: I'm warning you. If you say 'Jehovah' once more--
[Mrs. A. throws a rock at the Jewish Official]
Jewish Official: Right. Who threw that? Come on. Who threw that?
Crowd: She did! It was her! [suddenly speaking as men] He! He. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him.
Jewish Official: Was it you?
Mrs. A.: Yes.
Jewish Official: Right...
Mrs. A.: Well, you did say 'Jehovah.'
Crowd: Ah! Ooh!...
[Crowd throws rocks at Mrs. A.]
Jewish Official: Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say 'Jehovah.'
Crowd: Ooh...!
[Jewish Official gets stoned to death]
Summation 2
I look forward to the actual release. Of the American English version. For more than one platform. (This is not directed at the firefox team).
Chris said that current stats indicate that Firefox usage peaks mid-week, as opposed to the weekends - which he said is the reverse of what it was two years ago when they launched Firefox.
Where do they get these stats?
more innovation and web integration isn't going to develop Firefox any more pentetration into IE's market share. Why? Because for the most part people just don't care.
I love firefox, use it daily. Even put up with the bugs that were "ignored" for a long time (like memory leaks, having your bookmarks vanish for no reason, etc). Yet reading the review it is still clear that too many miss the point.
It doesn't matter how much better you are than IE, you have to give people a real, tangible reason to switch and then you have to make it so exceedingly easy that there is next to no effort involved. That second part is more important than the first. I like many others here can come up with many "tanglible" reasons for people to switch, I still can't get them to download it or install it.
Penetration comes with getting someone that people trust to distribute the software along side their product. May I suggest Quicken (all that tax software coming out can easily accomodate FF). Hell, get a game manufacturer to provide the browser as part of the install process. With a good windows installer it can be made a seamless part of experience.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What time is "afternoon" exactly? Is it 12:01 PM - 3:00PM. It sounds very vague.
IE7 and FF2, I have to say its really no contest. Despite just plain hating how much vertical real estate the new tab toolbar takes up, performance with IE 7 is just horrible. Even a light page like the Google home page take about about half second longer to render on my Core 2 Duo machine. Let's not forget only really giving lip service to CSS standards, there is still going to be a ton of web pages that need hacks or workarounds for IE CSS issues. Check out http://www.positioniseverything.net/ for the latest hoops you need to jump through for IE. In no means is Firefox perfect in its CSS support but at least they respond to incompatibilities in a reasonable time frame.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of the little drop-down thingy that lists all the tabs? They put it right where the close button is supposed to be (well, moved a little to the side if you re-enable the old-style close button), but it's in the way and annoying. I haven't seen anything that looked obvious in about:config to remove it, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
It's a shame too, since I had really hoped to replace Opera 9 on the iBook, because that didn't really live up to my expectations. Here's hoping to 2.0.1!
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
I knew this from Camino and find it one of the best new features. I usually want to get rid of some tabs once I'm done with a, say Research, and want to close the all. I can now do that without the hassle to first open them and then close them again. This really improves speed on my slow G3 because the tabs dont have to be loaded.
Is this included in Fedora Core 6, either in the core packages or the extras? It'd be nice to get a new browser with my new OS.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
And google are Ursurpers of Freedom.
Information wants to be free, don't use firefox. use a TRUE free GPL webbrowser like Elinks instead and
LEt freedom Ring!!!!
Gee what a great feature...
I've only been using that in the Safari browser for os-X for what... Five Years now?
Well it'll be nice to use a browser that renders pages right most of the time...
I just hope the dictonary can cope with my atrocious spelling.
Honestly, I've been using Firefox 2.0 since RC1, and I don't find anything really compelling about it over Firefox 1.5. I mean...I use FF about 80% of the time at home, and use it almost exclusively at work, but there just wasn't anything that made me go "wow" about it.
Also, it seems to me that Firefox has developed a rather hefty memory / CPU footprint, and its text rendering performance is noticably slower than Opera and IE, especially on Linux. (Just to be clear that means Firefox on Linux seems to render huge amounts of text slower than IE wine'd on linux and Opera native on linux...just my experience).
Anyways, it's a solid release, and still my primary browser....good for the Firefox team...but I can't help but think it would have served FF better to release something more compelling in their 2.0 release.
It really is. My problem is that I think I like Opera better than FireFox. I still use FireFox most of time because I am used to it. :)
I guess I can understand people having a hard time moving away from IE.
Now if Firefox could just copy Opera's zoom feature
Yes I know FireFox has a much better increase text feature than IE but the zoom in Opera really is very nice.
It works great with those websites that value "White space" over content.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Download the English-US windows binary here:o rg/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0/win32/en-U S/Firefox%20Setup%202.0.exe
http://goestoeleven.org/misc/mirrors/ftp.mozilla.
I downloaded it yesterday and posted it on my web space hoping that people will download it here instead of hammering the official FTP before it has propogated to all of the official mirrors.
having your bookmarks vanish for no reason, etc
I have more bookmarks(a few hundred) than anyone else I personally know, and I've never seen this happen. Is this something people besides yourself have experienced?
I'm Just curious.
Cheers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I think firefox needs a tagline. Maybe Mozilla foundation can contact BMW and include a free firefox CD with every BMW sold. (ie. the Ultimate Driving Experience along with the Ultimate Browsing experience). Things like this will help firefox's penetration. People really need a reason to use firefox over IE, and right now I can think of two good reasons:
1) Firefox doesn't have the huge ActiveX security hole that IE has.2) Firefox offers tabbed browsing (now that IE7 is out, this is no longer a Firefox advantage).
So the list of major advantages firefox has over IE is dwindling. I think integrating some form of anonymous browsing, either through a network such as Tor, or through an anonymous proxy service would give Firefox yet another advantage over IE... Maybe Firefox 3?
Perhaps the primary goal of Mozilla is not 'share'?
To quote Mitchell Baker: "The goal of the Mozilla project is to promote innovation and enable the creation of standards-compliant client technology to help keep content on the web open."
I think they are doing very nicely at that, myself. I take my hat off to them.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Google Analytics allows you to look at browser versions in use on individual days. It wouldn't be too much work to run off a report & do some quick analysis on the peaks.
Which site this data is based on is a question though (i.e. does it reflect browsing habits of Firefox users rather than corporate use) as is the time of day the stats were taken. A 1pm vs. 7pm weekday peak would mean the difference between Firefox making it into homes of the office.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Gotta love how the release notes say "a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab." Anyone know what said shortcut is?
Neat sounding feature, but kinda useless if you can't find the shortcut anywhere.
P.
free music
If ignorant of the almighty
General Public Licence,
you deserve to be killed.
Killing you is not immoral -
but justified to save life on
Earth for future linuxen.
Google taught singularity
within universe of opposites,
has lobotomized your mind.
You are Enslaved by Google -
no whip or shackle required.
You do not have the freedom
to discuss/debate GPL.
Google destroys your mind
by suppressing opposite view.
Firefox equals self masturbation
of mind - for opposites create.
You are educated singularities.
Does anyone know whether Google Browser Sync is compatible with 2.0?
I'm planning to get the release when it goes public this afternoon (finally, an inline spell-checker!), but I'm not going to start using it as my primary browser until GBS supports it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... is Ctrl+Shift+T
it doesn't compile (gcc-4.1.1):
g++ -o nsDependentString.o -c -I../../../dist/include/system_wrappers -include
In file included from
from
from nsDependentString.cpp:40:
nsTDependentString.cpp:41: warning: 'void nsDependentString::Rebind(const PRUnichar*, PRUint32)': visibility attribute ignored because it
nsTDependentString.cpp:41: warning: 'void nsDependentCString::Rebind(const char*, PRUint32)': visibility attribute ignored because it
make[1]: *** [nsDependentString.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/mozilla/xpcom/string/src'
make: *** [all] Error 2
From TFB:
Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn't just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues.
There ya go. Better engine under the hood. This is not so much of an eye-candy upgrade as a "let's make it work better" upgrade. Unlike some other browser authors I could mention.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Just thought this was interesting. I just went to download the FireFox 2.0 RC3 version and got this URL: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.htm l?product=firefox-2.0rc3&os=win&lang=en-US
and decided to try and munge the URL to this:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.htm l?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US
Both have certs which expire 02/Nov/2006. :(
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
3) Inline spell-checking.
Not a biggie if you don't use online forums, but with the increase in the number of websites that let you write as well as read (think MySpace, Facebook, various forums, Writely/Google Docs, etc.), people are going to come to expect more advanced editing capabilities in their browser. Having spent some time using browsers that have inline (red underlining) spell checkers, such as Safari and Konqueror 3.5, going back to Firefox is always painful.
It's not nearly as much of an advantage over IE as tabbed browsing was, so there's little doubt that the gap between the two has narrowed somewhat, but it's still something.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I've got my copy preordered. I should also go preorder the Web 2.0.
Yet you're still a douchebag. Yay, you use Opera - go fuck yourself.
And the dissenting view. Powerbook 1.33 GHz with 10.4.8. Loaded RC3 against my better judgement when it appeared have been running it since in the hope it cured some of the memory leak nightmare with FF 1.x.x.
It's better on that score, and I have, surprisingly, not had any dumps yet. Running AdBlock Plus, CustomizeGoogle, NoScript, GoogleBar Lite. Slashdot and Ars load for me 'very quickly'. While investigating memory usage, I've had 20 tabs open on the most complex sites I could think of, still no crashes.
YMMV.
(No Smoke theme (sob))
Does this Version support ActiveX nativly? If not then this is never gonig to find its way into corp. Too many apps use ActiveX for this to be reliably not to mention Corperate standards have IE and not Firefox, save startups. This will be standard when Suse is standard.
Increased distribution stinks? Please keep to your coding, and don't offer any opinions to the marketing and sales departments, thank you.
Hmm, the "type ahead find feature" (i.e. search for text in page with the bar that appears at the bottom of the browser) now lacks the find again up and down buttons. Any suggestions?
This option has been removed from the privacy UI. Does setting network.cookie.cookieBehavior to 1 in about:config still work in this release?
One of the things that keeps me using Opera is its MDI. I resize *pages* a lot and I dont want to resize my *window* in FF to get the same thing.
There are some sites where the content is just way too wide. I could just close the page and move on, but sometimes the content is worth putting up with bad design. I just resize the page.
Plus, sometimes I turn off author mode stylesheet. This usually turns off their formatting and the text wraps to the screen. And I resize the page. (notice the recurring theme?)
Sadly FF does not do MDI. Why?
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Because it has approximately 1Mb more than Opera included in the install file.
You can further tweak the UI by editing userChrome.css in your profile's chrome subdirectory. E.g. the following code gets rid of the default icon in the tabs next to the title saving some of the valuable tab space:
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
The OP and responses are exactly what I've been wondering about with FF.
...this has always got me to think about extensions, and frankly why I don't use Firefox. I think: "if someone inclined to read slashdot isn't savvy on all the extensions, what hope is there for the average (ie: not nerd) crowd?"
*I reiterate that I like FF and I think people should use whatever tool works best for them.*
This seems to come up in just about *EVERY* Firefox thread. You get someone that posts..."Firefox is great, but only if it did X instead, I'd switch to it."
Then, some enterprising slashdotter will post "Try the 'X-enabler' extension..." followed by a greatful thanks from the OP.
Me? I've read slashot for several years, used Firefox for several years off and on... but I just don't like the fact that I have to go in search of extensions.
I don't know, just some thoughts I've had. Good luck FF community with your release!
OK, according to mozillazine (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Cookies it should work in FF 2.0.
Will the extensions for 1.x be compatible for 2.0?
Bhavesh
Source to top search engine ranking
I guess as a follow up to my own thoughts here...
I wonder, how do all you find the extensions that work best for you?
Do you scroll through the list (of extensions) and just pick and choose based on what you think will work best for you?
Do you monitor some kind of RSS feed or forum for new extension releases? (if so, how would have a new user that's walking into the vast array of existing extensions to find what they might want?)
Or do you just post on slashdot that Firefox doesn't do 'X' and wait for someone to show you how to fix it?
In a nutshell, I love that Firefox can let me customize it exactly how i want it. But nobody but me knows exactly how I want it, so how do I go about doing that?
Wow, you've read slashdot for several years? You must be a god!
Look, you don't have to go in search of extensions. The browser works fine out of the box and provides privacy protection, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, the best javascript implementation, proper support for more image formats than any other browser including SVG, MNG (last I checked) and proper PNG... It just happens that you can add additional functionality through extensions. If you don't need it, then you don't need them. Meanwhile, they provided a very nice site from which you can download extensions so that you can get them if you need them.
There's nothing stopping anyone from making a nice website that has a great set of extensions, except that there's apparently little demand. Every so often I do a writeup on which extensions I happen to use, and post it on my website. (The last one was on a different site - I haven't updated for 2.0 yet but that's coming.) (ObDisclosure: I have amazon referral links, but no other ads.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, silently install firefox for them
/silent switch...
Unfortunately, as far as I can see, the installer doesn't understand the
I want the Negative Moderne skin on this badboy...
...it's Ctrl+Z (Ctrl+Alt+Z always works when Ctrl+Z undoes typing).
My other body is also not wearing any.
Its already out, they just dont have the link public yet. http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?prod uct=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US
Obviously I only cared for the Windows/English/US version.
So far under Mac OS X 10.3.9...
I selected "Start with blank page" in Preferences. Still starts up with "You've downloaded Firefox 2.0" page.
I selected "open new windows in new tab" in Preferences. New windows open in the current window or tab.
Contextual menus don't work as previous. In 1.5, leftclick and hold on a link would open the Mac contextual menu. In 2.0, I have to hold down the CONTROL key to open the Contextual menu.
Back to the working 1.5 version for me. Let me know when you get 2.0 "downgraded" to the functionality of 1.5.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I'm sure you'll be Troll in no time, but I shall always fondly remember you as Funny.
So it's been like more than 24 hours since release... has anyone found any bugs?
Yeah. First, Firefox won't play my favorite IE7 extensions, and it isn't as fast as my pre-pre-beta install of IE7 at downloading harmful scripts and spyware.
Oh, and for some reason, MSNBC won't run as fast under Firefox as IE7 - what's up with that?
And how come it keeps popping up all these warnings about "harmful content"? Those are annoying as heck.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
However, I have an application where I have a number of tabs (a couple of dozen), open to pages with many JPG images in them. Suprisingly, most browsers choke on this. The best so far is Opera, but even it starts to choke when many JPG's are on the tabs at once. So I was excited to try the new Firefox.
Well, with a couple of dozen tabs open, the memory footprint of Firefox.exe was nice and low, under a meg. However, system performance was *terrible*. Looking at the Task Manager, over 2G of swap space was in use (hence the choking of the system). As I closed the tabs with the images on them, the swap space usage went down.
Does anyone know what's going on here??? Images on web pages surely can be cached on disk, and displayed as needed, rather than choking up swap space. And if it is Firefox using (virtual) memory to hold those images, why isn't that showing up in the task manager memory usage entry for the process? (Does TM show more of a "RMEM" statistic versus "VMEM"?) It's very frustrating.
The best browser by far for this scenario, is still Opera. It handles many large JPG's very well. At a certain point, it starts failing to render them in some circumstances (paging around won't render them, but if you slowly scroll, they will display). I wonder if there might be some GDI resource allocation limitation going on? Might it be a limit that could be upped?
It seems like such a basic test, but so many browsers fall down on it.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Why do the .exe's keep getting bigger and bigger?
Why does firefox 1.5.0.7 take up 32 megs of ram where as 2.0 takes up 48, both with 3 tabs open to the same site? I thought they said it used less memory?
The new theme, it works I guess on Windows with the whole vista thing, but doesn't really work for XP. And its even worse on Mac OSX. They really fudged the mac osx skin big time.
I think I have made 4 or 5 posts on the mozillazine forums and have gotten nothing done about all these issues. Its like my posts are falling on blind eyes.
As far as I can tell, that's not an inline spell checker. (I just installed SpellBound 0.7.3 onto my work machine running FF 1.0.7 -- yeah I know it's old, but I haven't had a compelling reason to upgrade.) It just gives you an option when you right-click in a text input box, to open a dialog that shows you your misspelled words. It doesn't actually change the behavior of the input field that's on the page, or give you highlight-as-you-type checking.
On FF 1.5, does it actually underline misspelled words as you type, in the field on the page? Or is it just the same thing, a separate dialog box that shows up, which you have to trigger manually? If the latter is the case, then I'm very disappointed. Safari and Konqueror 3.5 both have as-you-type checking like basically like any decent word processor. (I think both use the integrated spell checking of their respective OSes, OS X and KDE.)
Dialog-box driven spell checkers are rather 1992. I sure hope that's not the state-of-the-art in Firefox spell checking.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
1MB?! Yikes! That's going to take an extra 3 seconds to download!
E pluribus unum
why wait? http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.htm l?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US
Wow! People care about what extensions you use? You must be a God!
...but while we're at it, I'll bookmark this post for future use. It will contrast nicely with all the past posts I've seen throughout the years (okay okay.. I really *am* a slashdot God for being around so long) about how Opera is bloatware and "nobody wants all those features, let me install what i want..." -each Firefox release includes more and more right out of the box. It's no longer the "lean" bare-bones browser that branches off the Mozilla suite of applications.
What makes you think I was bragging my slashdot usage? Where does "I've read for several years..." lead you to believe I think I possess devine powers? I'd like to present the "leaps to conclusion award" to you. You're also in the running for the "quoting out of context" award as well. The quote you pulled is clearly out of context of my original statements about how people complain about the browser lacking certain capabilities and the someone else has to point out that an extension exists to correct it. And how I don't think that's a good approach.
Where did I refer to the default installation at all?
The slashback against Opera has died down to a dull roar these days. Now it seems to just be the Open Source advocates that just take issue with it.
Just get it now, without overwhelming specific mirrors:m l?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US/a
;)
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.ht
I don't see this as a bad thing, as your still getting it the way they want (using the official link that selects a mirror for you) I'm just not waiting for them to post the link, so I wrote it myself
...and yes, I know you've been a member longer than I have. .....and besides, the question I asked had nothing to do with the default installation at all. I agree that it is a fine browser out of the box. I simply asked a question (that was in no way trollish, or fanboyish) about how users "find out" about these extensions.
If joe user never looks at slashdot or strolls through the list of extensions (or reads your website), how does he find out about extensions?
I just addressed the andectotal instances I've run across where even slashdot users are in the dark on the available extensions. Again- these are for the people who aren't happy with the default install.
...was like so yesterday.
*Preface: I assume there's people doing this (below) already, I just never see it done..*
I would guess there's little demand for sites like this is because they are not "activity centered" and are instead "person specific" lists.
The mozilla pages are the closest I've seen to listing extension by activity (categories), but the categories are too broad.
I think most people associate the activities based on the person... ala: If I'm a developer, I'm interested in what Blake Ross has for extensions. because they are likely the same types of activities you'd be doing.
Other than that, I've never understood why I would be interested in someone elses extensions. That's like saying "here's what in my wardrobe..." fine if you've got the same fashion sense. But instead, I think peoples extension lists should be something like:
If you're into bloggin/author, you might find this extensions helpful...
Web developer....
Social networking a
instead of just saying "here's what I use!..."
Just some thoughts.
Firefox is still relatively lean. I agree, it could be leaner. Frankly though I don't think that the install size is the problem, it's the memory leak issue. That seems to be much better, however, in 2.0.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh wait, I'm still using Firefox anyway. Nevermind.
I would guess nobody is savvy on all the extensions... not even on most of them.
Whyever should they?
The extensions do just what their names tell you: they provide extra, or should I say extended functionality.
And the situation "oh, I like this program, but only if it did <insert feature here>..." is just the reason for implementing extensions.
The idea of Firefox, as I'd understood it, is providing the 20+ percentage of functionality which 80%+ users want/need/care about. Whatever extra you need is available through extensions - and the way you find the extension is either saying "hmmmm,I'd love it if Firefox did this, let's see whether I can find some extension which does it" or ranting on Slashdot andwaiting until somebody points it out to you.
Of course, you can program it yourself, too.
To turn the rant around a bit: I tried Opera a while ago. A great while ago, for it was still in version 6 or 7 at the time.
One of the things which turned me away was the "everything included" philosophy; I do admit it's a great browser, but it doesn't offer me the great thing about Firefox: growing with me.
With Firefox, I got the basic browsing functions I was used to since Netscape 3.0 or whichever version it was when I was in primary school. Then I got to add on stuff which I found interesting, practical or necessary. Or amusing.
And when I ceased to find certain things amusing or practical or whatever, I could completely and utterly remove them.
So it's a matter of personal taste and philosophy, really.
Ignore this signature. By order.
First of all, Firefox tells you about them at multiple points, including the screen displayed after your first run. If you actually read that - I know most people don't, but that's their problem - then you can go straight to extensions.
Second, everyone knows about browser toolbars and such from having them shoved at them nonstop, so they know that web browsers are extensible. They also know that search engines exist. They do have a decent shot to find extensions that way, especially since they have been referred to as everything from plugins to modules (and firefox refers to them both as add-ons and extensions depending on where you look.)
Anyway your comment reads more like a complaint that people can't find them - when most people will never need them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Right, that's why my page (I just did my updated page for 2.0, it's here tells not only what extensions I use, but also why I use them. (Woops, looks like I need to make one small edit...) A simple list doesn't help. People are always making lists and they're not useful. I mean if we had some kind of web standard for lists it would be one thing, at least people could reference them... but we don't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I know it's bad form to reply to myself, but I just thought I'd put it out there that FF 2.0 does, indeed, have real inline (underline-as-you-type) spell checking. I'm looking at it right now; it uses a straight horizontal red line underneath unknown words rather than the squiggles of Konqeror or the heavy dashes of Safari/OS X, but overall it looks pretty good.
Right-clicking on a "misspelled" word yields suggested corrections (e.g., "Konqueror" is suggested as 'Conquerors,' 'Conqueror,' etc.), as well as an option to disable checking for that field.
All in all, looks to be pretty well done. For anyone who spends any time on an online forum, it's a significant advantage over IE (which I am told will not have inline checking in v.7 -- odd, considering they popularized the feature in Word), and cause to upgrade from earlier Firefox versions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Good grief man. I'm talking about the *fringe case* like the OP at the top of this thread. Did I assume that this person doesn't know about extensions?
I know about extensions, search engines, and the mozilla addon website. So if I download Firefox, I should search all of these for everything i don't like about the browser if/until I find an extension that fixes it?
*I'm not knocking or complaining about anything* For the last time... I've noticed in many cases (most noticably on slashdot) seasoned firefox users who still are not knowledgable about certain extensions. I'm not saying that bad, or good, or anything.... I'm just asking how these users are supposed to "know what they don't know."
All these posts and I think I just mainly wanted to say...."Most of these fringe cases for extensions appear to be solved for users by "word of mouth"....that's odd."
I guess forget everything else I said.
I always feared using Opera would turn me into a self-righteous bastard. It's too bad fear of the Opera monsters bullied you into posting as AC, you should be proud of this. Eh, well, even as AC you still should be. Funny stuff.
Amen brother. I hear that. Opera provides more functionality that a lower percentage of users need.
Clearly browser usage stats indicate otherwise though
Every time I look at the new features, this still feels like a Point Release to me. I would only justify it as going up a whole version if substantial underlying code was changed which, of course, is not visible to the user.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You must have a really small hard drive.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Maybe you should stop using a 500 MB hard drive ;-)
You're asking the impossible. Does an Opera user know everything there is to know about UserJS? Does an IE user know about every add-on?
No. Of course not. Do they have to? No.
I bet these same users, were firefox not to exist, would say, "Gee, I wish I could do such and such in IE or Opera". Only difference is, the response would be, "Yeah, me too." instead of a link to the extension that provides the functionality desired.
IMO, this makes FF better. If it isn't there, it can be done.
If it's not there in IE or Opera? In most cases, Tough shit, you're SOL.
Until FF can replace ActiveX with something more secure while providing similar functionality
Ajax is kind of buzzwordy but that's exactly the thing it's actually good at. For just about anything companies do today that requires ActiveX they could just as easily be using Ajax... it will take some time to replace existing systems though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not *asking* for anything at all.
I anecdotally noticed that slashdot users, in a majority of threads that I've read, are often unaware they can resolve some of their problems via extensions....and wondered if they are unaware, what is the best means of finding information out for everyone else?
I never asked for them to change anything, or for all users to be aware of anything? For the love of pete!
me: Hey slashdot/firefox guy! I noticed a lot people aren't aware of good pizza places in their area. How do you all find out about the best places to go that would match their tastes? Seems like word of mouth is the best way.
You all: You're asking the impossible! Use the phone book! The pizza place he's going to make a good enough pizza! He can add whatever toppings he wants to his pizza! He can make his own if it's not the way he likes it!
me: geez... I'll just get chinese.
Hey my Mandriva setup is 4.4g and my windows XP install is 650meg, they both have email clients and web browsers... but, with your logic, since XP is smaller it is better??? Why is firefox bigger? because: more = more
(or alternativly doom=3meg doom3=3gig is smaller still better?)
Does anyone know how to scroll through tabs with the mousewheel? I used an extension (MiniT) for Firefox 1.x but it's not compatiable with 2.0!
Since lots of people seem to be asking "how can I do this" and get responses like "get that extension", here's my challenge:
For those of us who use our operating system with a dual-language keyboards - and there are many millions of us - it's very annoying to type in a URL and discover, after hitting Enter, that you've been typing nonsense in Hebrew. An extension that automatically switches the keyboard back to plain ol' English whenever the location bar gets focus would be REALLY nice.
Is there such a beast?
I guess I (like the GP) didn't understand what you were asking. It looked more like a rhetorical question to me. This is because I consider it to be a non-issue. Every user can't know all about every extension because, simply enough, there's too many of them - and every user is incited to visit the extensions site, at which point they see the top downloads and the top-ranked extensions, which is a pretty good barometer except that lots of people haven't apparently found adblock plus yet because original adblock tends to be on both lists. Suckers. :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
MSNBC doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft anymore and hasn't for a few years.. You should have said "Slate" because that's currently owned by MSN.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I'm amazed by the apathy about Firefox's new icons. Do they really not bother people?
I and hundreds of other people have been actively commenting, throughout the betas, that the new icons looked *horrible*. The main problem is their ridiculously low default opacity, seemingly for the sole reason that they could increase it to 100% when the mouse is over the icon. This is a BAD IDEA, and I have no idea why the developers of the theme stubbornly refuse to admit it. Those washed out icons did, and continue to, look awful.
Whatsmore, the icons themselves are nasty. They don't scale down (small icons) well, they look frankly amateurish compared to Winstripe, and any extension that inserts its own icon into the toolbar (like mine) will immediately look out of place, because its default opacity isn't about 50% like the rest of the icons. Sorry Firefox, but I think this new theme SUCKS BIGTIME. The first thing I did was grab the classic Winstripe theme.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
MSNBC doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft anymore and hasn't for a few years.. You should have said "Slate" because that's currently owned by MSN.
I was not aware of that.
I do own shares in Salon, actually.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Could someone please explain to me what makes this comment a "Troll"? Everything about this comment is either provably true or something which I believe. Thus, there is no troll here, and whoever moderated me should never be allowed to moderate again. Unless it was an accident, and they later comment here to undo it :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seeing as how the original Doom was a much better game than Doom 3 I think you could've used a better example.
Both of their installers are generally getting bigger. Firefox is just ahead of Opera. Opera is lagging behind.
Slate is owned by Washington Post and MSNBC'es "MS" comes from Microsoft. They do every kind of possible compatibility tricks disallowing other systems rather than their Win32/IE combination too.
Slate was always kind of "independent", we must admit it. I have seen/read many anti BillG/Windows stuff there.
Firefox 2 is a major update to a browser which is used on millions of machines and started to be choice of companies. I don't favour it on OS X (feels like Windows) but it is the truth.
See where Firefox 2 release is buried on their "Technology News", you will figure it is owned by Microsoft in its full extent.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032118/
Just months ago, those fascist were suggesting to update their IE to Mac OS X using people while there is no such thing exists anymore. Just to "punish" us for not using their OS. Not to forget MS Media Player 7 was causing major problems on OS X Tiger (10.4,latest) too.