Firefox 2.0 Officially Released

Many readers wrote in to make sure we all knew that Firefox 2.0 has officially been released on Mozilla.com, unlike yesterday's early preview. Here are builds for all languages and Win/Linux/Mac, and the release notes.

Comments

Needs more colours

[naylor83]

Once again...

If you find the Firefox 2 theme too bleak, I've got your fix right here.

Re:Needs more colours

[Despero]

Well, I was just gonna say... Firefox is much better looking than I ever expected it to be! Isn't it Opera's job to look modern? Congratulations to the people who designed this new theme. It's nothing special, but definitely a big step up from 1.5.

Re:Needs more colours

[archen]

I have the opposite problem. I'd like less colors. Actually what I want is the OLD Mac OSX pinstripe theme which was more monochromatic. Visually it was the nicest web browser interface I've ever used. Pity it got thrown out for the crappy look it has now.

Re:Needs more colours

[visgoth]

Bah, real men don't use silly pictograms, they use text.

1. Right click toolbar.
2. In the Show dropdown menu, select Text
3. Rejoice in a clear, consise toolbar, and saved screenspace!

Re:Needs more colours

[Anonymous Coward]

Space Saved? I use small icons, text takes up something like 2 to 3 times as much space.

Re:Needs more colours

[h2g2bob]

You know that site doesn't format right for firefox? My screen is 1024x768 which is not outlandish. Perhaps it's cos I'm still using 1.5.

Re:Needs more colours

[BrokenHalo]

Perhaps it's cos I'm still using 1.5.

Same here. I tried the 2.0 release candidates and was somewhat underwhelmed. The first irritation was the silly "close tab" widget on every tab, but I hear there's an "about:config" switch that can be tweaked to revert to the old behaviour.

But the main issue for me was that it seems to take about 1.5 to 2 times as long to render pages on this ageing 1.3GHz P4. I'm just not that patient.

Re:Needs more colours

[bcat24]

Hmm, I actually like the close button on each tab. It seems natural, without taking up too much space. Now, the dropdown arrow on the right side of the tab bar is pretty useless, IMO.

Re:Needs more colours

[plover]

Middle clicking on a tab will also close the tab without your having to nail the [X] with the pointer.

Re:Needs more colours

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried mouse gestures? I use the "all-in-one" mouse gestures extension and find it much easier to close tabs buy dragging a right-click downwards (drag up to undo). It's really hard to explain the joy of mouse gestures. Give it a go if you haven't already :-)

The only gotcha is those damn old sites which use javascript to override the right mouse click. Oh, and flash :-/

Re:Needs more colours

[tommut]

Now, the dropdown arrow on the right side of the tab bar is pretty useless

Yeah, you must not look at massive quantities of internet porn. This feature does become more useful when you get a bunch of tabs open (15-20) and you have to start scrolling through all your tabs. At that point, it's much easier to select which tab you want from the dropdown.

Re:Needs more colours

[jez9999]

Gah. That's still *way* under-saturated. I don't understand why so many people like this theme, the icons look so washed out it really makes it look amateurish, IMHO. Winstripe had virtually no opacity change on mouseover (just like the theme for virtually every other GUI program out there), and looks MUCH nicer. What's the point in designing vivid, colourful icons if they're only gonna be in full colour 0.01% of the time (on mouseover)??

Prey tell, does anybody know of a theme that REMOVES the opacity change on mouseover, and just leaves all the icons at 100% opacity all the time? That's what I'd like. I looked into making it myself, but from that above theme it looks like quite a lot of work. :-\ Until I find such a theme, I'll be using this.

Re:Needs more colours

[jez9999]

Middle clicking on a tab will also close the tab without your having to nail the [X] with the pointer.

Does it, in Linux? Certainly 1.5 didn't do it the Windows way; middle click tried to open the URL of whatever you currently had copied into the clipboard. I always HATED this behaviour, but apparently it's intuitive for Linux users.

Re:Needs more colours

[plover]

I can't answer how they handle it in Linux, as I use Firefox under Windows XP. In Firefox, middle clicking on a link will open it in a new tab, middle clicking on the tab closes the tab, and middle clicking on a text window will bring up the scrolling tool (which I hate.) It's not particularly intuitive on this platform, but then again other than the scrolling tool, Microsoft hasn't really defined a default behavior for the middle mouse button.

If you don't like your current platform's behavior, there are many Firefox extensions that let you redefine keyboard and mouse actions. I'm sure you could find one that you could customize into behaving exactly the way you want.

Re:Needs more colours

[Don Giovanni]

Bah, give me text and icons or give me death!

Re:Needs more colours

[Deluge]

Funny, the first thing I did with my copy is download the theme to make it look exactly like 1.5 :)

Then click a few preference checkboxes to make it _behave_ exactly like 1.5.

I'm happy. I was afraid I would be tempted to try IE7 if I didn't like FF2.0's changes.

Re:Needs more colours

[shellbeach]

Does it, in Linux?

It does if you set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false in about:config ...

The behaviour, of course, is not intuitive to linux users - yes, middle-click does paste text, but as many have pointed out in the numerous bug reports filed under this issue, no application under Linux supports pasting into a tab or button. What's really amusing is that if you look at those bug reports, you'll find countless attempts by linux users to rectify this behaviour as it's frustrating and confusing - only to be told by Windows users (such as Asa Dotzler) that pasting URLs is what linux users want!

Read and enjoy: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17113 2

Woot

[irishxpride]

I'm also glad to note you didn't link directly to the executable. Yay, mods. yay.

Re:Woot

[voice_of_all_reason]

Why? It technically costs Mozilla *less* bandwidth because then we won't be downloading an .html file as well.

Re:Woot

[Matt Edd]

Because .exe is for windows.

Re:Woot

[cheater512]

And noone needs a windows exe since we are just going to emerge world and find it automagically installed.

Re:Woot

[irishxpride]

because it's difficult to install firefox 2.0 in ubuntu with a .exe ...

Re:Woot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Because not everyone will use the same language version (meaning people will download 2.0 twice or will go nuts on mozilla's sites trying to 'fix the bug'.
Because not everyone uses Windows. I partially downloaded from the 'pre-release' link and I'm on Linux. No bandwidth saved there.
Because not everyone will use the same mirror. I happen to be just a couple hops away from mozilla's FTP servers, but most people are probably closer to a mirror.
Because people who might otherwise use bit torrent or get it from a repository might just download the whole thing after clicking the link.
Because some people might actually want to see the page to see if it is even worth downloading.

Re:Woot

[reub2000]

It wouldn't be so difficult with wine.

Re:Woot

[eurleif]

The download page picks a random mirror. Linking directly to the file would put all of the load on a single mirror.

Re:Woot

[DarthBibble]

What he meant was: now Linux users can find their setup file because it's no longer a direct link to an .exe. Not that nobody needs Windows files.

Re:Woot

[kv9]

The download page picks a random mirror. Linking directly to the file would put all of the load on a single mirror.

no, it would not:

# host releases.mozilla.org
releases.mozilla.org has address 64.50.236.52
releases.mozilla.org has address 64.50.238.52
releases.mozilla.org has address 130.239.18.158
releases.mozilla.org has address 130.239.18.159
releases.mozilla.org has address 155.98.64.83
releases.mozilla.org has address 216.165.129.134
releases.mozilla.org has address 216.165.129.141

Re:Woot

[makomk]

Firefox actually works quite nicely under Wine (well, 1.5 under Gentoo does anyway - haven't tried it with 2.0 yet, and may never do so if I can get the Linux Flash 9 plugin to work properly).

Re:Woot

[alx5000]

My post was indeed meant as a joke. I promise I'll be more careful next time I find some thought funny :P

Hehe nice cover

[BeeBeard]

Hmm, so we're calling yesterday a "preview" are we? ;) We know where to go and we know how to download it. Lock and load, gentlemen.

If you're like me and you've already been running RC3, then you've got it already.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lock and load, gentlemen."

What could you possibly mean?

Re:Hehe nice cover

[AndrewNeo]

I was running RC3 but installed 2.0 just to be safe. Noticed the build date didn't change. Oh well! Now at least 1.5.06 is cleaned off my system too.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[justsomebody]

Nah, I'm calling this one I'm surfing with right now a wet dream.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

Not to get picky ... but this drives my brother and I mad... it's "load and lock" not "lock and load". You have to first load the ammo before you can lock the bolt closed.

That's like "drive away and get in the car!" or "dash and dine" or ...

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[BeeBeard]

You're right, it does make more sense when you reverse it. Just learned something, thanks :)

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Tony Hoyle]

lock refers to locking the safety, which you do first - so the correct term is 'lock and load'.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

no, lock refers to LOCKING THE BOLT CLOSED after loading a round in the internal mag or breach.

Pick up a bolt-action rifle [circa when "lock and load" came about]. It's a hollywoodism, see this page about half way down.

You "switch" fire modes, you don't lock them. And frankly I always hear it as "turn the safety on" or off, etc... not "lock the safety" because that doesn't make any sense.

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

Now you can get all pissed off at stupid action movies when they authoratively say "lock and load gentlemen" ... :-)

I ruined action movies for ya!!!

It's almost as if they've never seen a bolt action rifle... cuz most snipers use fully automatic mag loaded rifles...

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Propaganda13]

http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterL/lockandlo ad.html
Lock and Load
This imperative phrase originally referred to the operation of the M1 Garand Rifle, the standard U.S. Army rifle of WWII. Its meaning is more general now, referring to preparation for any imminent event.

To load a Garand, the bolt would be locked to the rear and a clip of ammunition loaded into the receiver. The command lock and load was immortalized by John Wayne in the 1949 movie The Sands of Iwo Jima: "Lock and load, boy, lock and load."
There are earlier uses of the command reversed, load and lock. This command, primarily used on firing ranges, referred to the loading of a single round into the Garand (or into another weapon). In this case, the lock referred to striking the bolt handle with the heel of the hand to ensure it was fully closed and locked into place.

And you want to mess with something the Duke said? Shame on you. :)

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Propaganda13]

-1 Redundant

That's what I get for trying to work and post to Slashdot.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to get picky ... but this drives my brother and I mad...

NOBODY expects the Grammar Nazi! Ahem. That should read, "this drives my brother and me mad...". The way to remember this is to think of how you would say it when excluding your brother from the sentence. Would you say, "this drives I mad..."? No? Didn't think so.

Ok, mods, time to break out the wet noodle: "-1 Grammar Nazi"

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

The origins is "load and lock." Wayne screwed up his lines when he said "lock and load" and it stuck.

You "open" the bolt when you pull it back, you load the damn gun by putting a clip in, and you lock it when you push the bold forwards and turn it down [e.g. lock it closed].

Whatever... if you've never fired a rifle I guess you just wouldn't get it. Personally when I "lock" my rifle, I sure as hell hope the breach is not exposed...

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

Perhaps but "noun and me" sounds so lame because it's OVER FUCKING USED. "john and me walked to the park..." etc. It's used on broadcast TV all the time improperly. I just felt I should rebalance the equation.

You see, I am the one.

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[g1zmo]

Not to get picky ... but you should have written "drives my brother and me mad". Since we're picking apart the details. HAND.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[JavaManJim]

Lets give Mr Propaganda13 the benefit of the doubt for now. I am a beginning high power rifle shooter. AR15 and Garand M1. I can see where this got started with Garands because its really important to get that particular gun going well.

Garands have this really nasty bolt you have to lock back. A common problem is 'Garand thumb' from trying to load when its not locked back and the bolt slams shut on your innocent thumb. Also once a clip is loaded into a Garand (from the top) its hot and ready to fire so the safety that is part of the trigger guard had better be on.

AR15/M16's have a reverse process generally first pull the bolt back, insert the magazine then press the bolt catch button on the left side to release the bolt and allow it to slam forward. Also folks, the bullet does not seat all the way in on these gas guns, it sticks out about 3/16 of an inch.

This is a nice thing for geeks. If you might be interested in Service Rifle go to www.odcmp.org and search for a club in your area. Newcomers are always welcome and you can borrow all the equipment to get you going.

Thanks,
Jim Burke

Re:Hehe nice cover

[superiority]

Ummm...correct grammar sounds lame because it's overused?

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Paradise Pete]

Not to get picky ... but this drives my brother and I mad

Not to get picky...ok, to get picky...that's me, not I. You wouldn't say "this drives I mad," would you?

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Jaruzel]

Well over here, in Blightly, where we INVENTED the language, the correct Queens English usage is 'My Brother and I' - however many people in the UK would say 'my brother and me', the breakdown of usage is as so:

'My Brother and I' - Professional white collar public school rich bastards* (and the Royal Family**)
'My Brother and me' - Low menial workers in boiler suits and their orange faced bleach blonde bimbo wives (and the BBC).

But seriously, this is a new low for Slashdot, a long thread on such a pointless topic... no wait, I think arguing over 'lock and load' is even more pointless....

-Jar.

* I'm one of these
** The Queen is well known for saying 'My Husband and I....'

Re:Hehe nice cover

[tomstdenis]

"I went to the park" would imply that "john and me went to the park" is incorrect. It seems that people ALWAYS use "me" in this context regardless of how it sounds.

Tom

Re:Hehe nice cover

[johnw]

'My Brother and I' - Professional white collar public school rich bastards* (and the Royal Family**)
'My Brother and me' - Low menial workers in boiler suits and their orange faced bleach blonde bimbo wives (and the BBC).

'My brother and myself' - Daily Mail readers

Seriously though, the correct rule for both American English and English English has already been given in this thread. Just take out the "My brother and" bit and ask yourself whether you would say, "I" or "me". To a first approximation, "My brother and myself" is always wrong.

Re:Hehe nice cover

[Gulthek]

Pedantic much? Check out the third paragraph.

From Wikipedia:

"Load and lock" was the original order, and referred to the operation of the M1 Garand rifle, the standard U.S. Army rifle of World War II. The phrase describes the insertion of a clip of ammunition into the rifle, loading the clip, and locking the bolt forward (which forces a round into the chamber, readying the rifle for use).

"Lock and load" has a more general meaning now, warning people to get ready for action. It was immortalized by John Wayne in 1949's Sands of Iwo Jima, where the Duke used this reversed phrase both in combat and as a humorous metaphor for becoming intoxicated.

One can also understand "lock and load" as a meaningful instruction with the M1, as described in the manual: before loading the clip, the proper procedure is to lock back the bolt using the operating rod.

So the "correct" phrase would be lock, load, and lock. Neh?

Re:Hehe nice cover

[kurobejin]

Not to get picky.... but this drives my brother and me mad. It's "this drives my brother and me mad", not "the drives my brother and I" in this case.

You wouldn't say "this drives I mad", now would you?

I'll wait...

[cp.tar]

... until the automatic update installs it for me.

With all the fake^Wmistaken announcements, it's the only way I'll be sure it's out.

And, of course, I'll be reasonably certain most of my extensions will work with 2.0.

Re:I'll wait...

[ChodeMaster]

On the topic of functioning extensions, I use a few, and they've all updated themselves and are functioning perfectly.

For those intereseted (I'm guessing none of you), they are: Ablock, Adblock Filterset.G Updater, All-in-One-Gestures, DownloadThemAll!,ForecastFox,IE Tab, and Web Developer (toolbar).

Also, since the http://www.mozilla.com/ is linking to the 2.0 downloads it seems safe to assume this is the official release.

Re:I'll wait...

[hahafaha]

I have considerably more extensions. The majority of them worked, but some did not. Hopefully, they will soon.

Re:I'll wait...

[cheater512]

Your very good at guessing.

Re:I'll wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

NoScript (my favorite extension) is also working flawlessly.

Re:I'll wait...

[Spetiam]

what about the jajah extension? anyone know if it's any good before i install it and muck things up?

Re:I'll wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's why they put compatible version numbers right there on the add on page, but I could be mistaken and they're simply there for decoration.

Re:I'll wait...

[Spetiam]

I was wondering more about the usefulness/feasibility of the plugin per se.

That's all well and good...

[brennanw]

... but can it run the flash 9 beta without crashing? I've had no luck so far.

Re:That's all well and good...

[webheaded]

Flash is annoying anyway...no big loss. :p

Re:That's all well and good...

[lubricated]

no problem for me so far

Re:That's all well and good...

[Teun]

Fine here on Xubuntu and Kubuntu

Re:That's all well and good...

[rdwald]

Rumor has it that you need to make sure you're running your xserver with 24 bit color depth, not 16 bit, in order to get Flash 9 Beta working with Firefox 2.0 on Linux. Good luck.

Re:That's all well and good...

[ultranova]

Rumor has it that you need to make sure you're running your xserver with 24 bit color depth, not 16 bit, in order to get Flash 9 Beta working with Firefox 2.0 on Linux. Good luck.

And why on Earth would anyone use 16-bit colors on their desktop nowadays ? Even X-VNC server - which has no acceleration whatsoever, since it doesn't use the video hardware of the host machine - running on a 200-MHz 192 MB machine handles 24-bit colors perfectly well.

Re:That's all well and good...

[rdwald]

All I know is, my brother was having problems with Flash 9 in Firefox 2.0, and did some research, and figured out that this was the problem. I didn't ask him why he had been running at 16 bit to begin with; something about Ubuntu's default settings. Or maybe he had problems at some point and didn't remember to change the settings back. I don't know.

I love the the opensource front

[tranceyboy]

Wow Firefox has coem a long way, with my first introduction on linux, good for the opensource community. We make better products than any closed source company...... And for free!!! One of these days closed source companies will learn, maybe to late by then.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember not all open source is free, look at red-hat, open source, but not free.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, hope they don't. I kinda like getting paid...

Captcha: contrary.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ kid, you should try better when you're Karma whoring. At least make your ass kissing, no idea about business ass sound like something other than an OSS zealot.

Just for the record, which open source graphics program is better than the standard closed source options for pro grade work?

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

What a small mind you must have to believe that the only possible way for you to get paid, given the skills you have, is for you to contribute to a proprietary product.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

Define "better", elaborate "pro grade work", and we might just have a discussion brewing ...

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla making software for free? I don't think so. They get paid millions by google, amazon, etc. for search redirects and that sort of thing. They're rolling in the money... and doing what with it? hmm....

Re:I love the the opensource front

[tranceyboy]

"Just for the record, which open source graphics program is better than the standard closed source options for pro grade work?" Aritist are always a special breed that don't like it when thier tools change to much, I would say the gimp, and xara http://www.xaraxtreme.org/ Give em a try you might like it. As for an OSS zealot, I beg to differ, i use proprietary software on a daily basis, because sometimes thats is all there is... When a great project comes along that can replace it... I look and listen.. Instead of pulling a gun out because it's free, or argue that since there is no support it's bad(using opensource software is a double edged sword you get it for free but when there is an issue you have to actually educate you self, instead of havign you hand held). I always said using OSS makes smarter people, there is less hand holding, and you ahve to actually read documentation WOW!!!!. No I have never paid Adobe for photoshop, never needed it, every apllication i need for work is free and oh OSS. You should try to get a weeks worth of work done on opened souce software, it might change your perspective on things a bit. Eventhought running proprietary software is a matter if choice, for you it's ok, but not for me. Im glad that all the combined hardware and software on your machine might cost you about $8,000 to run(enjoy):) Further more, a lot of proprietary software has benifited from OSS, take a look at the recent IE7, kinda looks and feels like firefox; but not on par yet. Don't think so? Download it give it a whirl, the fireup firefox.... After wards tell me what you think. Kudos to you my buddy on the other side of the fence; it's always better to keep an open mind.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[tranceyboy]

I never said no one was making money at this, take a look at redhat, the sponsor fedora, but also make money at it. There is nothing wrong with that all. Hey even Richard Stallman has made his pretty penny to, So has MR. L.T.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow Firefox has coem a long way, with my first introduction on linux, good for the opensource community. We make better products than any closed source company...... And for free!!! One of these days closed source companies will learn, maybe to late by then.

Easy man, you're going to coem all over yourself!

Re:I love the the opensource front

[aussie_a]

Just for the record, which open source graphics program is better than the standard closed source options for pro grade work?

When you take into what I'm willing to spend, GIMP is better then Adobe. But then I'm not willing to spend more then $10 on Adobe.

Re:I love the the opensource front

[commanderfoxtrot]

Wow.

Xara is based on the original Artworks for the Acorn Archimedes, written by Computer Concepts (who also wrote one of the best DTP programs around, Impression).

I can't believe they've open sourced it- that's great!

Too Many!

[Wellington Grey]

Wow! The third firefox 2.0 article in 24 hours. Boy, I can't wait to read all the insightful comments people will leave. Again.

-Grey

Re:Too Many!

[OriginalArlen]

My comment is a dupe of your comment.

Re:Too Many!

[i_should_be_working]

I'm sure there will be plenty of insightful comments in the next little while..

Just wait here while I go, umm, write some..

CTRL-C CTRL-V
CTRL-C CTRL-V

Re:Too Many!

[wild_berry]

I didn't ask during the last two times, but is anyone else getting high processor usage reading Ars Technica's journals? I have a few open in tabs and find that (with win32, GB language pack) some of the adverts cause high processor usage. I suspect that's a JavaScript thing. Anyone experience the same or can confirm?

Re:Too Many!

[l0b0]

Do you realize you would have been modded troll and insightful if you'd typed C-x r k C-y?

2.0?

[stonefry]

I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a day now. I can't really see how this warrants a 2.0 release. It seems like there should be more added features and innovation that we have come to expect from the Mozilla team to jump to 2.0. Don't get me wrong, I love the software and I have converted just about everyone I know to Firefox. This is a Solid release, but maybe a 1.6 or something.

Re:2.0?

[OneSeventeen]

Part of me wants to agree with you, but the other part of me says the whole point of Firefox is that not all of the cool features are built in. While I would like better RSS integration, I'm glad they are leaving the major feature upgrades to the add-on developers.

(although would it be so hard to add the cool click-and-drag margin resize features for printing that IE7 has?)

Re:2.0?

[unoengborg]

I agree, the only killer feature they have added that make it stand out on the windows platform is the spell checker. (konqueror have had spell checking for quite some time). Even though FF the CSS support, still is much better than that of IE7, I would at the very least expected that FF 2.0 should comply with the acid2 test.

The smart thing to do for the Mozilla people would have been to make FF easy to use in corporate environments, an area where IE have been strong. That means having support for easy network installation and management, and perhaps add in XForms by default. Together with AJAX, XForms could be a very powerful in e.g. intranet applications.

Re:2.0?

[cyclocommuter]

IMHO, this release warrants the 2.0 moniker. Aside from the inline spell checker, it appears the dreaded "memory usage" problem has finally been nailed. FF 2.0 does appear to reclaim memory much faster than the older version. To me, this bug fix together with the perceptible increase in launch time and page loading/rendering is a major improvement, which combined with the inline spell checker is enough to warrant the 2.o moniker. I also agree that additional features are better left to extension developers.

Part of 2.0 release it appears is also not just contained in the browser code itself but in Mozilla's Add-ons website which gets launch when you click the "Get Extensions" link in the Add-ons dialog. Add-ons or extensions are now grouped together by functionality as opposed to being grouped together by popularity, ratings, etc.

Re:2.0?

[naylor83]

Firefox 2 is not Acid2 compatible because of the development tree they have used. Firefox 2 uses basically the same rendering engine as 1.5, while Firefox 3 will be a huge leap ahead on the rendering side. For Firefox 2 they have mainly concentrated on a few nice features + loads of polish. This is what Firefox 1.0 should have been like :) (I'm thinking search engine manager, tab overflow handling, etc.) But then we would have had to waste another two years with IE6.

Re:2.0?

[cheater512]

Acid 2 support would be nice but its a little unrealistic to achieve.
As is its got brilliant CSS support.

Re:2.0?

[reub2000]

Agree. In a couple of years there will be a FireFox 8.0.

Re:2.0?

[Jugalator]

I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a day now. I can't really see how this warrants a 2.0 release. It seems like there should be more added features and innovation that we have come to expect from the Mozilla team to jump to 2.0.

First, Firefox 2.0 is supposed to be a "0.5" upgrade from 1.5; that is, approximately as much of a change as 1.5 was compared to 1.0.

Now, Firefox 2.0 offers these noticeable features, among others:
- Updated UI
- Anti-phishing
- Tab close undo
- Session restore
- Form spell checker
- Microsummaries
- JavaScript 1.7
- Loads and loads of bug and stability fixes, including improved memory usage

I'm really not sure why this couldn't be a 2.0 release? What else should it be? 1.6 would be way to minor for its features anyway. Heck, this is the scale e.g. IE 5 -> 6 was on IMHO, if not more, and then that was an incremental step of 1, not 0.5 as Firefox 2.0 is.

Re:2.0?

[kinglink]

If they had a great way for me to click a button and add an RSS feed to my google homepage. (They have something LIKE that but I don't know about that exactly, yet...) That's all I need for RSS.

Personally I think RSS feeds need better integration. The live bookmark idea sucks, I can't stand it because I have to open up each book mark to look at it. I rather get too much info in a second then have to take minutes to search all my feeds, I don't use many, but something makes me not want to trust live feeds. What would be better is a simple page just with a list of feeds I've been looking at and then if anything is new on them, such as google's personalized homepages.

That all being said, Firefox still will beat IE7 in my book, I don't care if I get free sex with IE7. With how buggy IE6,5,4 was I'd probably get AIDS from it.

Re:2.0?

[Silent_Fire]

Has the memory leak really gone away? It was 24K when I opened (with the google/firefox start page), 32K after going to slashdot.org, reading the firefox discussion, and clicking reply to your post. Opening a second tab, going to cnn.com, and clicking through half a dozen pages gets it up to 34K. Opening 58 more tabs, some of which result in 404 or timeouts, gets it up to 94K. Closing everything but the original slashdot tab drops it to 70K. Opening a second tab and reading my livejournal friends page sends it back up to 74K.

That's an improvement, but it's still not fixed. I can understand the amount of memory used when I open lots of tabs, but it should be freed when I close them all again.

Re:2.0?

[drew]

IE 5 -> IE 6 included a substantial improvement in DOM and CSS support (which is a little sad when you consider how awful IE 6 is at both...) while Firefox 1.5 -> 2.0 changed virtually nothing on either front, so I would say this is nowhere near the scale of IE 5 -> IE 6 (or even IE 5.5 -> IE 6).

Anyways, IMO even if Firefox 2.0 is, as many people have claimed, as much of an upgrade from 1.5 as 1.5 was from 1.0, than no, it doesn't deserve to be called 2.0. If they didn't think the last upgrade was worthy of a major version jump, then why would another equivalent upgrade suddenly be worth it now? And from what I've read regarding the changes (based only on reviews so far- haven't had time to test it yet) it really doesn't sound like this version jump is even that big. It sounds to me like it belongs around 1.7 or 1.8 or so...

Of course if every other browser out there is jumping the major verion every other release, I guess you have to as well, or people will think you're falling behind.

Re:2.0?

[reub2000]

A 0.5 upgrade from 1.5 would be 1.10. Compare Konqueror 3.0 to Konqueror 3.5. You'd find much more of a difference.

Re:2.0?

[p3d0]

That's not a leak. That's a cache.

Re:2.0?

[Zwaxy]

Anything less than a megabyte of memory usage is amazing for Firefox, considering that the binary itself is 11MB.

Where are you looking to find these numbers? I have a feeling you might not be looking in the right place.

Re:2.0?

[xerxesdaphat]

Shouldn't it be 1.10 then? I didn't know version numbers were decimals.

Note that I'm not disputing the 2.0 moniker, it feels like 2.0 to me at least.

Re:2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add-ons or extensions are now grouped together by functionality as opposed to being grouped together by popularity, ratings, etc.

What are you talking about? Extensions have always been grouped by category.

Re:2.0?

[legallyillegal]

you click the little orange RSS icon in your address bar... it brings up the RSS page, such as this one. You now get the option to subscribe to the feed using whatever method you choose, be it Google Reader or whatever

Re:2.0?

[19061969]

I think it's an ordinal scale, not interval.

Re:2.0?

[Silent_Fire]

Ah, yes, off by a factor of 1000. My bad - dratted thing reports it as 76,000, but it means 76,000K. So replace K with M above.

Re:2.0?

[Silent_Fire]

Note: numbers above off by a factor of 1000. My bad - dratted thing reports it as 76,000, but it means 76,000K. So replace K with M above.

My problem is that it's a cache which NEVER gets returned to the OS. I kept the browser window open after the previous experiment, and currently have 4 tabs open - it's back up to almost 80M, and doesn't seem to be dropping below 70M even when I drop back down to one tab. If it's a cache, then there needs to be some way to configure it to not eat up a large chunk of my RAM; I already set Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Cache to use a 20M cache.

I don't mind it using all my RAM when I open lots of tabs, but there needs to be a way to get it to drop back down to something reasonable.

Re:2.0?

[p3d0]

My problem is that it's a cache which NEVER gets returned to the OS.

Well, it does get returned when you close all Firefox windows. Small consolation I suppose.

I don't mind it using all my RAM when I open lots of tabs, but there needs to be a way to get it to drop back down to something reasonable.

Good point.

Re:2.0?

[ejp1082]

Well, they integrated RSS a whole lot better (I love being able to set my default RSS reader). The spellchecker is pretty sweet and works a lot better than the extensions that previously tried to provide the same functionality (at least in my experience). Session restore and the tab handling are nice as well. Plus there's the speed and memory improvements.

Though in general, I agree, their versions seem off - the 1.5 release always baffled me a bit, and if my understanding is correct they plan for the 3.0 release barely a few months from now in early 07.

In the end though, I choose to look at it this way: The betas were actually betas, and the release candidates were actually release candidates, which is more than you can say for some companies *cough*Google*cough*Microsoft*cough* that treat them as marketing terms.

Re:2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

- Updated UI

You misspelled 'Crappy, washed-out'.

Re:2.0?

[ultranova]

Anyways, IMO even if Firefox 2.0 is, as many people have claimed, as much of an upgrade from 1.5 as 1.5 was from 1.0, than no, it doesn't deserve to be called 2.0. If they didn't think the last upgrade was worthy of a major version jump, then why would another equivalent upgrade suddenly be worth it now?

The question is: Are the total chances after 1.0 sufficient to justify pumping the major version number ?

Remember, Open Source development methodology is: "release early, release often". In the ideal case, you release a new version every time any feature gets added or any bug squashed. Since this means that there are very little differences between subsequent releases, the only number you can ever justify upping is the build number if that's the only thing you're looking at.

Alternatively, you could release 1.0 and call every build between 1.0 and 2.0 a "development vcrsion". That would allow you to claim a huge number of improvements in 2.0 changelog, but would not make much sense otherwise.

Re:2.0?

[kinglink]

This might be a stupid question, but is google reader, google homepage?

Re:2.0?

[.com b4 .storm]

the perceptible increase in launch time and page loading/rendering is a major improvement

If you like that "improvement," maybe you should upgrade your Linux system to Windows. You'll get even more increased launch times, especially since you will have to re-launch the computer multiple times a day. :)

It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 1.x made a reasonable attempt at mimicking the interface of OS X using XUL. Sure, its contextual menus weren't slightly transucent and some of its metrics were slightly off, but it didn't look completely out of place on the system. Firefox 2.0 has thrown away the Aqua interface and replaced it with some generic chrome which looks rather poor per se, but is especially jarring on Mac OS X.

I hope someone comes up with a decent Aqua skin, but it still doesn't make any sense to force users to resort to skinning just to make a program fit with the default system interface. The Mac build of Firefox should look like a Mac program by default; skinning should be for those people who want to make it look like a pink christmas tree or whatever.

Please do not bother mentioning Camino: it lacks support for Firefox extensions, which are the only reason I have for using Firefox.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Sanity]

The Mac build of Firefox should look like a Mac program by default;

Agreed. It is really annoying when developers of cross-platform apps don't realize that you need to conform to what users are accustomed to on their platform by default. Even Sun figured this out with Java (eventually), when will Mozilla?

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. They'll get to that 3% platform eventually.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Xzzy]

Near as I can tell, they've been shifting away from that philosophy and moving towards a "their way or the highway" tactic. With 1.0 they usurped the use of ctrl-u to clear a line of text, which has been a convention with unix (emacs introduced it afaik) as far back as I can remember. Now, it opens the "view page source" window.

Disabling it requires mucking with dotfiles, and I appreciate that the capacity is there.. but that's not the point. Running firefox under a given platform should cater to that platform's conventions. I don't want it to be the same under all platforms, I want to be the same with MY platform.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[cheater512]

Due to the way Mozilla creates the UI its a little difficult to make it look like each operating system.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[dn15]

Agreed. Kevin Gerich, who was involved in creating the previous Firefox theme (Pinstripe) has an updated version for Firefox 2.0. It is a nice improvement over the new default theme. http://kmgerich.com/2006/09/27/pinstripe-for-firef ox-now-with-20-more-macintosh/

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I support Iceweasel.

Firefox developers put out Firefox, and in Firefox Ctrl+U means view source. If someone wants to put out a version for OSX (or Debian, or any other system) that adheres to that OS's standards *instead of Firefox's*, it's not Firefox anymore and shouldn't be called Firefox.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Burpmaster]

With 1.0 they usurped the use of ctrl-u to clear a line of text, which has been a convention with unix (emacs introduced it afaik) as far back as I can remember.
[...]
Disabling it requires mucking with dotfiles

Hey, why not trade one UNIX tradition for another?

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[hawaiian717]

You might want to look at an optimized build. I'm using the G5-optimized 2.0rc3 (same as 2.0) from this MozillaZine forum thread and it doesn't bother me too much. It aquafies most of the widgets (if a web page trys to style a widget, you get the styled version; only unstyled widgets get aquafied) and I do notice a little transparency in the context menu. I don't know if it's in the official 2.0, I haven't tried it. There are also some G3, G4, and Intel optimized builds, but I can't recommend any since I haven't tried them.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Yvan256]

Except that a browser isn't an OS and as such shouldn't even have "it's own standards" when every OS has said standards in place.

Once again, here's the obligatory car analogy:
"Our car has square wheels, that's our way. If you want round wheels, fine, but you'll have to find and install them yourselves."

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Yvan256]

That's the problem right there. Why the hell does Mozilla creates its own UI? Every operating system already has windowing and widgets APIs in place. Heck, one of the reason I hate Firefox on OS X is because even the form widgets don't look like OS X. I feel like I'm using an old version of Windows when I see pull-down menus and radio buttons in Firefox!

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

6.1% now and growing actually.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Use FF on Linux/Windows, but get www.caminobrowser.org for the Mac.

the current nightly builds are really nice and stable too, as development speed isn't overwhelming.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Camino feels like a mac app. :)

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[cheater512]

The Firefox UI is created basically out of thin air. Its all run by XUL (XML format UI) and Javascript.
The only way to make it cross-platform is to have your own widget set.

Small question: Why dont you use Safari?
I know I'd use it if I had a Mac.
Keep in mind that I use Seamonkey and dont really like Firefox much.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Yvan256]

When I was on Windows, I used Opera (in fact I still use Opera 6.0 on my ThinkPad 760XL). When I switched to Mac, I started to use Safari. Firefox felt a bit sluggish on Windows, but I have no idea how people can tolerate it on OS X. It feels as heavy as iTunes on my G4/1.42GHz. And if someone tells me to upgrade my computer for a damn browser, when my PC can do video editing, then the problem isn't my computer, it's the damn browser.

I'm sticking with Safari, thanks.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[dirgotronix]

not only does it look out of place, 2.0 broke a lot of things.

left-click-hold opens a context menu /everywhere/ on a mac. ff1.5 did too. 2.0 is no go. those of us on mac laptops prefer not having to contort to hit control and click for context menus. i can click and wait half a second for it. 2.0 took that away.

javascript popup windows, like screenshots on ign: i click the link, nothing happens. what gives?

they took the close tab button away from the top right. granted, it's on each tab, now, but should i have to move the mouse /all the way from one corner to another/ to do something that was a quick upward movement away?

pressing the down arrow to scroll through a page: previously, it just went straight to the bottom, so it was useless. now, it follows links, which is even more useless. give me an option of how many lines i want to scroll when i hit the up or down arrow.

oh, and the .dmg has the standard 'app icon, drag icon, applications folder' thing, except they forgot the applications folder. it's just a picture of it. real funny, guys. i had to open up finder and drag it over that way, because you forgot to make a real shortcut and did a picture of it instead.

i'm seriously dissapointed with this release. if not for adblock, i'd have gone with opera long, long ago. i'm sick and goddamn tired of firefox's memory leaks, and now they went and fucked up the most basic ui conventions.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Kelson]

Please do not bother mentioning Camino: it lacks support for Firefox extensions, which are the only reason I have for using Firefox.

Of course, a big part of the reason Camino doesn't support Firefox extensions is that it uses a native Mac UI.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[salimma]

Check out http://kmgerich.com/

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[FuturePastNow]

I use Firefox on a G3 700MHz iBook. Starting it up takes some time... but the obvious solution to that is to never exit the program (which is how you're supposed to use a Mac anyway). Once open, it's as fast as any other browser.

Safari is pretty, but I can't stand browsing without Adblock and Flashblock. Besides, having a close button on each tab is just stupid IMO. Easy to fix on Firefox, impossible to fix on Safari.

Re:It looks out of place on the Mac

[Yvan256]

I use Firefox on a G3 700MHz iBook. Starting it up takes some time... but the obvious solution to that is to never exit the program (which is how you're supposed to use a Mac anyway). Once open, it's as fast as any other browser.

Why is that "how I'm supposed to use a Mac anyway"? Open programs take memory, I don't see how keeping them open while you don't use them makes any sense at all. Also what I meant was that Firefox is dog-slow while using it, not only when starting it up. It scrolls pages like molasses, it feels cludgy, etc. I don't like it at all.

Safari is pretty, but I can't stand browsing without Adblock and Flashblock. Besides, having a close button on each tab is just stupid IMO. Easy to fix on Firefox, impossible to fix on Safari.

Easy to fix on Firefox, no sir. Unless messing about with XML and javascript is your idea of "easy", which is out of reach of normal users. As for the adblock and flashblock, disabling pop-ups and plug-ins takes care of the most annoying ads.

Fasterfox

[Despero]

Sadly, my favorite extension, Fasterfox, currently has no support in Firefox 2. That was pretty much my favorite thing about Firefox, too, so I really hope they continue to update it to support new versions of the browser.

Re:Fasterfox

[Ant P.]

Ah yes, fasterfox.

One of the many ricer addons that forced me to write a ton of server scripts to auto block firefox.

Re:Fasterfox

[Tony Hoyle]

Just block fasterfox. Not sure what you mean by 'a ton of scripts' - it's a single line in httpd.conf.

Re:Fasterfox

[Ash-Fox]

Sadly, my favorite extension, Fasterfox, currently has no support in Firefox 2.

Fixed.

I give you my word I didn't put malware or some other non-sense in it.

At!!!

[drcagn]

Latine dico... Non est versio latina Volpisflagrantis...

Re:At!!!

[WilliamSChips]

Nos dicentes Latine numquam accipiunt bonam linguae facultatem. Caesar debet invadere Volpemflagrantem.

Re:At!!!

[WilliamSChips]

s/accipiunt/accipimus/
Oblitus sum me prima persona uti. Et vere habuimus conformationes vocis ordinarias. Ave Caesar!

Re:At!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Romanes eunt domus!

Re:At!!!

[WilliamSChips]

Qui sunt Romanes et quorum domus ineuntur? An vere conatus es dicere "Ite Romani Domum"?

Same binary as yesterday....

[CyberZCat]

Yesterday's "pre-release" (CRC32): 4F3CF1D7
Today's "official" release (CRC32): 4F3CF1D7

I guess not much has changed since RC3...

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[n0dna]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=202228&cid=165 53576/

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[dtzWill]

Apparently the firefox team didn't get the memo about RC's from microsoft...

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[dubonbacon]

RC = Release Candidate. Candidate for Release. Which mean it could be released. Else it wouldn't be a candidate.

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess not much has changed since RC3...

Glad to see a Release Candidate that's actually, um, a Release Candidate.

Unlike with certain other browser... =)

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[dyftm]

That's because to mozilla, release candidate actually means release candidate, a build that will be released if no major problems are found (unlike Vista "release candidates" which are really beta releases).

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[Ginger Unicorn]

I've been running RC3 for a week or so, and if you go to help->about it just reports itself as Firefox 2.0, whereas RC2 reported itself as 2.0RC2

I think they must have been confident RC3 was going to be it!

Re:Same binary as yesterday....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know where you ever saw "RC2" in Help->About. I've been using FF 2.0 since RC1, but it has always simply said "Version 2.0" in the About page. I think they anticipate ANY RC version possibly being the final version.

Don't wait for automatic update

[asa]

The auto-update system will automatically apply security and stability updates. We're planning on providing an "optional" update to Firefox 2 through this system, and that will likely happen in a few weeks. In the meantime, please do download through getfirefox.com. As long as you do not use a direct ftp.mozilla.org or releases.mozilla.org, we're pretty confident in our ability to handle demand, thanks to our volunteer mirror network.

Re:Don't wait for automatic update

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not particularly confident in 2.0's ability to handle the extentions and themes we're currently using.

Thanx but no thnx, we'll wait for the automatic update.

xoxoxo, /.

Re:Don't wait for automatic update

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just stupid. When I click an option that says "Check for Updates" I want it to, I don't know, check for updates. A question, if I may. Why does firefox get distributed by a volunteer mirror network when it brings in lots of money via google searches?

Re:Don't wait for automatic update

[stefanlasiewski]

We're planning on providing an "optional" update to Firefox 2 through this system

Thank you for making this an optional update.

IE7 will be distributed as a "high-priority update" in a few weeks. This is a very aggressive schedule [1] -- for many users, a "high-priority update" is effectively the same as a "mandatory update".

I wouldn't complain if Microsoft waited 6 months before making IE7 a high-priority update. But they really should allow more then a few weeks of 'real world' tests--- early adopters of the Beta and RC products do not reflect real-world usage.

[1] It seems a little desperate. What's with the rush?

Re:Don't wait for automatic update

[radarsat1]

thanks to our volunteer mirror network.

.. just waiting for the day that bittorrent is built into Firefox.. ;-)

(yes i tried it myself a bit but got distracted..)

But seriously, even for automatic updates, it would certainly take a load off the servers. (Perhaps falling back to http if it's not available through a firewall or whatever.) Bittorrent's not restricted to only files over 500MB, it works fine for smaller files too. Azureus, for example, uses this technique (somewhat obviously, I guess.)

Re:Don't wait for automatic update

[cheater512]

lol. I think the mirror network wont have any troubles.
Using Bittorrent is a little redundant.

Buggy Release

[hibiki_r]

Am I the only one getting all kinds of bugs in the new release?

The search engine box starts blank, and the 'get more search engines' link does nothing.

Right clicking and selecting 'new tab' opens a blank tag that doesn't react to the location bar at all, and refuses to close by clicking on its button, right click + close, or hitting 'close all other tabs'

It lost every single one of my bookmarks, even though it kept most extensions intact.

I don't want to sound like a troll, but is this really the quality we want in a new release?

Re:Buggy Release

[n0dna]

It also has the same 1/2 finished windows install script.

It installs fine over the top of 1.5 while leaving the old 1.5 install listed in Add/Remove along with the new 2.0 entry. Removing the Firefox 1.5 entry removes the program entirely while leaving a now broken 2.0 entry in add/remove.

Not saying that an installer should be tested or anything.

Re:Buggy Release

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't seem to be having any of the problems you describe. Not that I'd have hit them on my own, but all my bookmarks came over, even the search engines I'd added stayed, the search engine add thingie (Manage search engines) works fine, and right clicking a tab and choosing close works for empty tabs as well as tabs with content. What system are you running on?

Re:Buggy Release

[hibiki_r]

I ended up making it work properly after wiping out 1.5.
It seems that the update process left some monkeys hanging around.

Re:Buggy Release

[LiquidCoooled]

Its most likely extensions, extensions, extensions.
I've found a couple of bugs myself but nothing as drastic as you seem to have encountered.
If you were coming up from a late 1.5ish version of firefox, your profile folder will contain a backup of your entire bookmarks file.

Best advice before performing a major update of anything is backup your data before you start.

Find out where your profile is stored on your machines and find out how to backup for the future.

As for my bug, I've got "tabbrowser preferences" installed and clicking the new "Go" button opens the page in a new tab. Theres nothing I can do about it for now either.

Also, for the privacy concious who have firefox set to store no history, there is a new menu item in History called "Reopen recently closed tabs" which does not follow your no history setting and shows a list of all tabs opened during the session (also, its not clearable without closing the browser window). tsk tsk

Re:Buggy Release

[Blue Fox USA]

"the 'get more search engines' link does nothing." If you start at Google, do you really need another search engine? (Any hint of sarcasm included for free)

Re:Buggy Release

[wolf08]

This might help: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Search_engines_disappear _from_Search_Bar Worked for me!

Re:Buggy Release

[bogie]

No problems here. And I've heard pretty much good things from everyone I know who has upgraded. So while I'm sure you have have a legit problem your single instance does not in any way prove that there is something wrong with the quality of this release.

Re:Buggy Release

[Talennor]

Same thing for me. And bookmarks were broken. I thought I'd lost them, but when I couldn't make any new ones I realized that it just wasn't doing the bookmark thing at all. Running the install a second time cleared up some things for me.

Also got an error about not having a function in js3250.dll at one point. Reminds me very much of the pre-RC1 releases. Remember those that didn't really handle upgrades without an uninstall and install (and even that was buggy).

Oh well, maybe we'll see 2.1 next week.

Re:Buggy Release

[BrokenSegue]

I had the exact same problem (the "get more search engines" link is not broken if the install goes correctly). I think it must be the extensions we use or some other weird setup issues. I solved this problem by manually cleaning out all of Firefox's files and reinstalling cold. Works like a charm now (now all of my extensions work).

Still, whatever the problem, I shouldn't have to do that. Mozilla should know better.

Re:Buggy Release

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one getting all kinds of bugs in the new release?

The search engine box starts blank, and the 'get more search engines' link does nothing.

Right clicking and selecting 'new tab' opens a blank tag that doesn't react to the location bar at all, and refuses to close by clicking on its button, right click + close, or hitting 'close all other tabs'

It lost every single one of my bookmarks, even though it kept most extensions intact.

I don't want to sound like a troll, but is this really the quality we want in a new release?

No you're not the only one experiencing this problem. HOWEVER, if you do a clean install you will find none of these issues.

I bet that everyone experiencing these issues is installing the new version on top of the old version with some flaky old theme or outdated extensions.

Recommended procedure for any new version of Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape for reliable function:

- Backup your bookmarks to a file.
- Uninstall the old version
- Delete your profile folders
- Delete the cache folders
- Delete the program folder
- Install the new version
- Import your bookmarks
- Install the latest versions of your preferred extensions
- Install plugins as needed
- Avoid themes like the plague
- Browse happily.

I follow this procedure for any new version of Gecko based browsers and the results are always predictable and very stable.

Don't like the default theme? Find something important to worry about; a browser should be functional, not pretty.

Re:Buggy Release

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mod parent up.
Same for me, bookmarks disappeared, lots of things not working; installing a second time fixed everything.

Re:Buggy Release

[scoot80]

Interesting - I've had no bugs whatsoever - but I've been doing all the incremental beta/pre-release updates. It seems to work great.

Re:Buggy Release

[kris_golden]

I had the same problem. Installing the 2.0 version a second time cleared it up... Restored bookmarks and everything.

Re:Buggy Release

[d_jedi]

Good to note. I won't be upgrading until all of the issues are worked out, and all of my extensions function flawlessly with no need for tweaking from me. (ie. I'm waiting for SP1 :->)

Re:Buggy Release

[fons]

I have the EXACT same problems.

Bit over the top

[Teun]

It's a bit over the top to announce this once more.

OK, you're trying to entice us to write about our 24 hrs. of experience, thank you it works fine :).
But I still have to decide whether I like the close X in every single tab.

I've used this installer script to get it onto my Kubuntu and Xubuntu boxes and it worked flawless.
http://everythingelse.wordpress.com/2006/07/15/how to-install-firefox-20-bon-echo-in-ubuntu/?namhuy.o rg

What *does not* work is getting a Dutch version of IE7, it's just not yet available, for FF2.0 I just modified the above script for the version I wanted and voilá!

Re:Bit over the top

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to about:config, and set Browser.tabs.CloseButtons to 3. Now you won't even have to decide.

Best. Feaure. Ever.

[Skynyrd]

I just installed 2.0 on XP and it seems to be working quite well. Most of my extensions work, and I'm happy.

Then I discovered The Feature(tm). A website popped up a window, rather than a new tab, with no ability to control the size and whatnot. I discovered a button in the upper right corner that says "open this window in default browser". Clicking it opens that window in a new tab in my open browser.

Thanks to whoever added that feature. Brilliant idea.

Re:Best. Feaure. Ever.

[Ragzouken]

That has been annoying me for ages! Websites don't even get the right size and there was no override for resizing.

Re:Best. Feaure. Ever.

[aztektum]

If it was a popup ad, then it's too bad it couldn't just block it. If it opened it because you clicked it, there was the option to have links that spawned a new window to open in a tab in version 1.5

Re:Best. Feaure. Ever.

[Skynyrd]

If it was a popup ad, then it's too bad it couldn't just block it. If it opened it because you clicked it, there was the option to have links that spawned a new window to open in a tab in version 1.5

It wasn't a popup ad, and the vast majority of those get blocked.

It actually was spawned from FoxyTunes (which is a great little plugin). In any case, sometimes I want the popup in a new window, adn sometimes I don't. This offers me a choice, and I love having more options and choices.

Re:Best. Feaure. Ever.

[funfail]

In Firefox, you can change the behavior of such windows permanently:

1. Type about:config in the location bar

2. Type "dom.disable_window_open_feature" into the filter

3. Change the settings as you see fit. For example, change "dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable" to true if you want to be able to resize any window.

Re:Best. Feaure. Ever.

[Skynyrd]

I just installed 2.0 on XP and it seems to be working quite well. Most of my extensions work, and I'm happy.

Then I discovered The Feature(tm). A website popped up a window, rather than a new tab, with no ability to control the size and whatnot. I discovered a button in the upper right corner that says "open this window in default browser". Clicking it opens that window in a new tab in my open browser.

Thanks to whoever added that feature. Brilliant idea.

Well crap.
It only seems to appear on windows spawned from FoxyTunes.

Oh well, the euphoria was great while it lasted.

Official 64 bit build?

[nu-gundam]

Will mozilla ever release an official 64 bit version of firefox? Not that I really care that much since I am usually running the 64 bit trunk build that I compile weekly anyways. But supposedly one of the reasons that Sun won't release a 64 bit java plugin for firefox is because there is no official 64 bit firefox. I am hoping that by Mozilla releasing an official 64-bit firefox Sun will finally get a 64-bit java plugin out.

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Reason58]

God knows you'll need to harness the awesome power of those extra 32 bits to browse web pages at an acceptable speed.

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[NMerriam]

God knows you'll need to harness the awesome power of those extra 32 bits to browse web pages at an acceptable speed.

We need 64-bit Firefox ASAP, how else can we open web sites with more than 4GB of content?

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[chris_eineke]

Well, myspace seems to work fine with 32 bits.

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Anonymous Coward]

God knows you'll need to harness the awesome power of those extra 32 bits to browse web pages at an acceptable speed.

Or maybe those of us running pure 64-bit environments would like to run our browsers with the same ABI as the rest of our applications.

However, the case of the Java plugin is particularly interesting. Java, as designed, is best implemented on 64-bit architectures, or at least architectures that support native 64-bit arithmetic types, because Java also has native 64-bit arithmetic types. The atomicity of the memory model is actually not guaranteed in some situations where 64-bit arithmetic has to be emulated on 32-bit machines. (Not that anyone really relies on this.)

So yes, there is a good reason why Java is better on a 64-bit architecture.

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. Not being able to download the DVD ISO of Ubuntu is the only reason I'm still stuck on Windows. Damn you Firefox. It's all your fault!

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Knetzar]

My understanding was that the JVM represented a 32bit stack machine. Can you produce a link?

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Eythian]

I've heard that Sun considered 64-bit machines servers only, and so they don't have a plugin or Java webstart for it yet. There is a bug report about it, which has been open for ages, and is among the top 25 RFEs in their database. Hopefully they'll do something about it soon. I'm missing webstart.

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I quite agree. This 64-bit Firefox will really help when I want to load a 16TB web page in my browser. ;-)

Re:Official 64 bit build?

[Kelson]

I quite agree. This 64-bit Firefox will really help when I want to load a 16TB web page in my browser. ;-)

So that explains why I have such a hard time loading MySpace!

No Adblock so far

[Piroca]

How can I get rid of those annoying ads?

Re:No Adblock so far

[glowworm]

How can I get rid of those annoying ads?

How? The same way as always... With Adblock Plus and Filterset.g updater.

They are both working fine on FFx 2.0 and have been for a while.

Re:No Adblock so far

[amRadioHed]

Are you sure? I've been using the 2.0 compatible version of adblock for several weeks now on the release candidates.

Re:No Adblock so far

[Anonymous Coward]

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/recommended/ Get AdBlock Plus

Re:No Adblock so far

[SScorpio]

Adblock works just fine. It's even in the list of recommended extensions: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/.

Re:No Adblock so far

[Ant P.]

You could just use a browser with adblock built in...

Re:No Adblock so far

[slashnutt]

Adblock Plus, since about v~.7, has subsription. I prefer the filter subscriptions to the g updater. You aren't locked into one set of languge built groups; the subsriptions has other targets for diffrent languages like chines, russian, german and a few others. Not that filter g can't add those, it just that there are other to choose from instead of one from G. Plus it is easier to maintain 1 adblock plugin instead of 2 and if the website moves then you easily add a new filter subscription instead of updating the 2nd plugin.

Firefox FTW

[pentapenguin]

Oh joy! Oh bliss! Oh wonderful delight! My Firefox 2.0 is out! :D Seriously, I can't wait for the integrated spell checking and some of the tab improvements like session restoration and the close button on the tab like Opera. Good stuff!

Iceweasel 2.0?

[Avitor]

And when can we expect Iceweasel 2.0? Which BTW Firefox 2 tells me is misspelled.

Re:Iceweasel 2.0?

[LiquidCoooled]

Its ok, it thinks firefox is misspelled (using English dictionary).

Re:Iceweasel 2.0?

[Run4yourlives]

When the hippies stop smoking so much...seriously, who cares?

Re:Iceweasel 2.0?

[hawaiian717]

firefox shows up as misspelled. Firefox on the other hand, does not show as misspelled--and one of the suggestions for firefox.

Re:Iceweasel 2.0?

[LiquidCoooled]

Not here its not, when I type firefox I get the option for "firebox" and "fire fox".

English/United Kingdom dictionary in use.

Re:Iceweasel 2.0?

[hawaiian717]

Ah. I'm using the English/United States dictionary.

64-bit support?

[empaler]

Godsdamnit, why must it be so hard to get proper 64-bit OS support? Yes, I know I can get an alpha-build of Minefield/FFx3 in 64-bit, but that's just not cutting it on a work computer. Might be fun in a VM, though (which is where I always use unfinished and dangerous softwares, e.g. IE7)

Re:64-bit support?

[AaronW]

The problem I think is that a lot of browser plug-ins won't work with 64-bit support, i.e. Flash. Konqueror solved this problem by making plugins run in a separate process context than the browser, so while the browser is 64-bit, it handles 32-bit binary plugins just fine. It has an added benefit that if a plugin goes berserk it doesn't take out the browser and I can kill the plugin task without affecting the browser.

Re:64-bit support?

[renoX]

Given the poor stability of many plugin (flash), I wonder why making plugins in separate process is not the default for *every* browser.
It's really an architecture flaw to put by default unknown code inside the main browser process.

Re:64-bit support?

[AaronW]

Another benefit of this is that it is possible to run plug-ins at nice CPU level and limit their resources. I.e. one can use ulimit to limit the amount of memory a plug-in can allocate.

Re:64-bit support?

[empaler]

Turns out it's just a matter of wanting to do it.
Start64 pointed me to Deer Park builds from Vector64, and it seems to work fine with my plugins. Granted, I haven't tried Flash yet, but I'm in no hurry to test that.

yesterday's FF2 tab close button problem solved

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, so I had a problem where when I hovered over a tab's close button, it would disappear (though it would still when clicked). Also, when I installed the beta of the upcoming Tab Mix Plus, the main tab close button would flicker when hovered over it, and I'd have to click several times very quickly to make it work.

The problem: a theme I had installed (which has since been updated today).

So, if you experience any UI weirdness, you may want to switch over to the default theme and restart to see if that makes a difference.

Now that I have my Tabs Mix Plus, I'm doin' okay with FF2.

Shame about the non-multi-threaded UI, though. Maybe someday.

Memory usage not fixed on Linux

[lalleglad]

I just downloaded it and fooled around for a few pages with opening and closing tabs, and I was sort of disappointed by seeing that apart from the problem of using a lot of memory it also seems to not really give it back when closing tabs. Why do I have to have 178MB memory usage (including swap) with just 3 tabs open (slashdot, linuxtoday and about:config) that had previously been a few more with some regular news sites.

Browsing speed does seem like it is faster than before, and I would even put it up with opera speed of loading and rendering pages.

Well, I know I am a cheapskate that should probably realize that browsing the web and checking email on top of fvwm2 needs more than a puny 256MB!

P.S. The new close button style is really a pain, and I wonder how I can get back the 'one' tab close and open buttons as it were instead?

Re:Memory usage not fixed on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have to have 178MB memory usage (including swap) with just 3 tabs open

You obviously have little/no understanding of how Linux memory management works.

Re:Memory usage not fixed on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither do you, with no explanation at all as to what you're talking about.

Regardless, you're clearly ignorant. Memory that is freed should not be shown as in use.

Is this the standard retort to people who criticize Firefox's long-standing memory usage problems?

Re:Memory usage not fixed on Linux

[Tim C]

Is this the standard retort to people who criticize Firefox's long-standing memory usage problems?

It's one of them; another is that it's not Firefox, it's a theme or extension (which may be the case, of course), while another is that there is no memory issue - ie the poster is mistaken or lying.

Re: Don't care

[naylor83]

There's on for instance ^^

Not stable enough on my mac

[Sanity]

I have been using RC3, which I believe is the same codebase as the actual release. For several months I have found that the Firefox 2.0 branch froze up on my Mac (10.4 MacBook Pro) several times a day. Every time a new release would come out I would try it for a day or two, then it would freeze up, and I would switch back to the stable release. I'm sorry to say that RC3 has been freezing up on me in much the same way, meaning that even with the official 2.0 release, its not stable enough for me to use it as my primary browser (and yes, I do submit bugs when the occur if I can, I have been submitting bugs to Mozilla since the project was first open sourced).

Re:Not stable enough on my mac

[Dhalka226]

Do you have any extensions?

I had a similar problem earlier today and yesterday (though I don't use a Mac). I'm not prepared to say 100% that it was the cause, but at least so far, I have yet to have the freezing issue recur since disabling the official Google Toolbar extension. If you have that installed, you may want to try disabling it and seeing if you have any better luck.

Re:Not stable enough on my mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad to hear you have problems. Are you sure there are no conflicting extensions or plugins? It works fine on my MacBook Pro with 10.4.

Re:Not stable enough on my mac

[slyborg]

I've been using RC3 since release, and haven't had one crash. So I canceled your vote ;-)

Googlebar Lite, AdBlock Plus, Filterset.G updater, CustomizeGoogle, NoScript; 10.4.8 PPC.

It helps if you supply some info. For all we know, it's the scripting on the porn aggregator you are on that kills it.

My take - noticeably more stable and less leaky than 1.5.0.7 on OS X.

MOD PARENT REDUNDANT x 2!

[BeeBeard]

Just kidding, you're right. I think we're all on Firefox overload at this point.

Re:MOD PARENT REDUNDANT x 2!

[Cr33pybusguy]

Pretty anit-climatic if you ask me. But then you probably didn't.

Re:MOD PARENT REDUNDANT x 2!

[BrokenHalo]

Pretty anit-climatic if you ask me.

Could you please explain in what way Firefox 2.0 is damaging to the climate?

Re:MOD PARENT REDUNDANT x 2!

[Woldry]

All those combustible vulpines, contributing to, y'know, global warming and that.

Re:MOD PARENT REDUNDANT x 2!

[Cr33pybusguy]

ya make one spelling mistake and you pay for it. Anti-climactic is the word of the day. Every one scream when you hear it! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

The question on everyone's minds...

[bcmm]

But does it fix the Slashdot bug?

Re:The question on everyone's minds...

[Fnkmaster]

Eh? The old Slashdot rendering bug was fixed ages ago, certainly as of the initial 1.5 FF release if not a bit before that. And with the move to the CSS-based layout of Slashdot, that nasty old table rendering bug would no longer affect Slashdot anyway.

Re:The question on everyone's minds...

[bcmm]

Bah. I know. I was poking fun at Mozilla for being so slow that Slashdot got fixed first.

Still no preference to disable tabs

[organum]

How hard can it be? Is the development team so ossified and chauvinistic that they want to force a particular navigation scheme on all users? Let folks who want to use tabs use them, but don't make the rest of us drink from a separate drinking fountain around the back!

Re:Still no preference to disable tabs

[Zorque]

You don't have to open links in tabs. You can set them to open in the same window or in a new window.

Re:Still no preference to disable tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck are you talking about? nothing opens in tabs by default. the only way you get tabs is be expressedly doing it yourself (either by setting preferences or command clicking or selecting open in new tab from the context menu). by default new pages go in new windows, and whats that first on the context menu? oh, it's "open in a new window". nothing but a loser troll

Re:Still no preference to disable tabs

[organum]

> You don't have to open links in tabs. You can set them to open in the same window or in a new window.
-------------
Could you be more specific? I've looked into it fairly extensively and numerous posts indicate this basic option doesn't exist. This is why the tabkiller extension does exist, though it doesn't seem to work with version 2. When I cmd-click or cmd-shift-click on a link, it always opens a cursed tab.

Re:Still no preference to disable tabs

[Zorque]

Alt+Shift+click opens things in a new window, at least on Windows. Hopefully it does the same on all platforms, though I'm not sure.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[johnmorganjr]

wow... kinda angry eh?? Did your old lady cheat on you with an Irishman or what?

Cookie Monster

[Beardo the Bearded]

You can no longer block 3rd-party cookies.

Re:Cookie Monster

[JTek]

I too noticed that the option for blocking 3rd-party cookies was gone. I can't find any mention of this in the release notes. Are you sure they haven't changed the default to block 3rd party cookies? Has somebody tested this?

Re:Cookie Monster

[molo]

Yeah, I was disappointed to see this gone from the UI, but it is still available via about:config . The key is network.cookie.cookieBehavior, default value is 0 (all cookies allowed). Change this to 1 (no 3rd party cookies). More info from the MozillaZine knowledgebase.

-molo

Re:Cookie Monster

[Tim C]

Are you sure they haven't changed the default to block 3rd party cookies?

Given that that could have undesirable side effects (such as breaking single sign on, etc) I would hope not.

Re:Cookie Monster

[BenoitRen]

Apparently they did this because the function never worked reliably anyway. So they removed it instead of giving you a false sense of privacy/security.

Pathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

Really pathetic.

Not so fast..err..fox!

[BeeBeard]

Ack, that horrible thing seems to sometimes cause weird problems with some websites that don't like all the simultaneous connections, and it can also cause memory leaks. Just be hardcore and modify your about:config yourself.

Re:Not so fast..err..fox!

[Despero]

Well, the only site that ever gave me problems for using Fasterfox was Ticketmaster, for obvious reasons.

I tried using that tutorial you linked to, and the "browser.turbo..." option in about:config was nowhere to be found. That also seemed to be the main thing to do the trick. I still hope Fasterfox comes out with something soon.

Re:Not so fast..err..fox!

[BeeBeard]

Oh, if some of the fields aren't already there, then you can just create them. Right click anywhere and select "new--> boolean", give it the name, and set the value to true. I'm sorry if that tutorial isn't all that self-explanatory--I didn't write it, just linked to it to try to help you out :) There are probably better ones out there, lurking somewhere on Google.

Re:Not so fast..err..fox!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that "Fasterfox" actually makes Firefox go faster, I have some snake oil that will make you healthier, and some swamp land that you just have to check out!

Originating website

[Extradition]

Looks like Firefox 2.0 does not have the option to Load images for originating website. :c(

Re:Not as secure as IE7

[johnmorganjr]

is your ass on crack or are you just ignorant?

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Dun Malg]

Because racism is t3h c00l. Oh, wait: it isn't.

"Irish" isn't a race, it's a geographical origin-- like "African". And for those who think "African" means "black", you need to take a look at an Algerian, an Afrikaans speaking Boer, and an Egyptian...

Bittorrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get some official torrents up on bittorrent.mozilla.org?

Lovin' it

[joshsnow]

Got it, posting from it, loving it.

This is the second new browser in 24 hours - I got IE7 yesterday and that's been a vast improvement over IE6.

Gotta say, the current state of browsing is due entirely to pressure from Firefox and Opera.

I remember when firefox was Phoenix, and then Firebird - when Netscape/Mozilla was going so badly wrong.

Wait - didn't Netscape make a customised version of firefox the official Netscape a while back?

OK, I'm babbling after a beering. Opera - love it. Firefox - love it. IE7 like it.

Re:Lovin' it

[hawaiian717]

Wait - didn't Netscape make a customised version of firefox the official Netscape a while back?

Yes, the abomination known as "Netscape 8". Fortunately, they only felt the need to make it for Windows.

New config options

[ben there...]

Trying to find something that wasn't discussed in the last thread, are there any new config options, in about:config or elsewhere, in the new version?

The last thread mentioned browser.tabs.closeButtons and browser.urlbar.hideGoButton. Any others?

Gripe #1

[no_pets]

I've had v2.0 for all of 3 minutes and already have a gripe. The X tabs icon has been moved from the far right to the right of each individual tab. I rather liked the old version as I could quickly X all my tabs down to the original window that I had open. Now I must mouse around to click all tabs.

Re:Gripe #1

[GFree]

Well apart from editing the config file to change the close-button style, do what I do and adapt: you want to close all by the first tab, just select the last tab and press CTRL-W a lot. There's a solution to basically everything.

Re:Gripe #1

[Skim123]

Also, can't you right-click on a tab and say, "Close Other Tabs" to close all tabs but that one? I'm not sure if that's in 2.0 - I imagine it is - but it's right here for me on 1.5 (although perhaps that's a feature added by an extension). hth

Re:Gripe #1

[mdd4696]

Two about:config settings that I changed after installing Firefox 2.0:

browser.tabs.closeButtons

• 0: Only show close button on currently selected tab
• 1: Show close button on all tabs (default)
• 2: Never show close buttons on tabs
• 3: Show a single close button at the far right (1.5 behavior)

browser.urlbar.hideGoButton

• false: Show Go button next to location bar (default)
• true: Hide Go button next to location bar

I couldn't find anything related to the tab list drop-down button or for the magnifying glass button next to the search box.

Re:Gripe #1

[labreuer]

This can be changed.

Re:Gripe #1

[Anonymous Coward]

The downside is that the majority of people who don't know how to muck with about:config may not know it's even possible. I think this is a big enough change that it deserves a spot in the normal FF prefs UI.

Re:Gripe #1

[xigxag]

Isn't there a "Close Other Tabs" option on the RMB? Or is that only with Tab Mix Plus?

Re:Gripe #1

[Azureflare]

The main advantage of having the close button on the tab itself is to allow you to close tabs without viewing them first. This is a great advantage especially when you have a site you don't really want to look at right now but want to close. It's handy sometimes, believe me.

This is the behavior of Opera and since I came from Opera I have always been annoyed by the fact that the close tab was in the upper right instead of on the tab itself. Thankfully you can change the position of the close button using about:config hacks, by using handy keyboard shortcut, or by using mouse gestures (which I use anyway).

Re:Gripe #1

[hawaiian717]

"Close Other Tabs" is still there in 2.0. And to answer another reply, you don't need the Tab Mix Plus extension.

Re:Gripe #1

[Anonymous Coward]

You can close the tabs without viewing first, on pre-2.0 versions, by clicking the mouse wheel...

Re:Gripe #1

[Jinxo]

Who needs the button. You're simply after CTRL-W.

Re:Gripe #1

[moonbender]

Exactly. I'm always amazed that so many people don't know that. It's much faster than using the close button or, heaven forbid, a keyboard shortcut. Works in Opera, too.

Re:Gripe #1

[eples]

Thank you.

The site is Vista ugly now

[VGfort]

Is there a reason why they copied Vista's / IE7s look? The guy that designed mozilla.com (also did Digg) did a good job but now it looks like crap. I understand they wanted it updated a bit to show off somethings changed but why did they copy Microsoft?

A little buggy in Linux and in Windows

[Billly Gates]

I admit I am using the release candidate of Ubuntu but southwestairlines.com as well as starting it up can crash it. I also crashed it once on WindowsXP too. You may want to wait til 2.0.1 comes out if you like stability or if your a power user.

Otherwise its quicker to start in Linux and uses alot less memory. Especially when using lots of tabs.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those who think "African" means "black", you need to take a look at an Algerian, an Afrikaans speaking Boer, and an Egyptian...

Or an albino monkey.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WilliamSChips]

Irish is also an ethnic group. Ethnicity is closely tied into race.

Attention Mac Users

[astrosmash]

OS X users should be aware of the following:

1. Firefox 1.5 users will be happy to know that Firefox 2.0 includes numerous performance and usability improvements over v1.5 specifically for the OS X platform, bringing the Mac version closer to the Windows version in terms of quality. You'll want to upgrade immediately. If you thought that Firefox 1.5 sucked, give 2.0 a try. Big improvements on the Mac.
2. If you're a fan of the smooth, pixel-resolution scrolling that comes with two-finger touchpad and Mighty Mouse scrolling, and you lament the lack of this smooth scrolling in Firefox, well lament no more! Smooth pixel-resolution scrolling was introduced in Firefox 2.0 Beta 2, and it rules. Unfortunately, this feature was removed because it made the bookmark manager scroll too quickly. If you're like me and do a lot of scrolling (and don't care about how the bookmark manager scrolls) you'll want to stick with Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 on OS X, like I do.

Re:Attention Mac Users

[Monkey-Man2000]

I believe you can change the smooth scrolling on OS X by going to Preferences|Advanced|General and toggling the "Use smooth scrolling" checkbox. This is in a copy of Firefox 2 that I downloaded last night.

Re:Attention Mac Users

[astrosmash]

No, I'm talking about the pixel-resolution trackpad scrolling. Firefox's old "Smooth Scrolling" option has never worked well on OS X.

Re:Attention Mac Users

[Monkey-Man2000]

The option seems to toggle on/off pixel resolution trackpad scrolling for me in the browser window but doesn't affect the bookmark manager. Is the Beta smoother?

Re:Attention Mac Users

[astrosmash]

No, unfortunately the final release uses the old "notchy" scrolling. When the "Smooth Scrolling" option is enabled it simply provides a smooth transition between each notch, but I've always found that to be slow and laggy, even on the latest MacBook.

True pixel-resolution scrolling, on the other hand, allows you to scroll as little as one pixel at a time if you scroll slow enough. The end result is that it gives you much finer control over scrolling if you use trackpad scrolling, and the implementation was very good and very fast; I couldn't tell the difference between it and native OS X applications. It goes a long way towards making Firefox feel at home on OS X. And once you're used to it it's hard to go back, which is why I was quite disappointed when it was removed in RC1.

The problem was that one scrolling pixel in the browser translated to one line of text in the bookmark manager, causing it to scroll way too fast. If you're curious, see bug numbers 319078 and 347626 on bugzilla.

Re:Attention Mac Users

[BZ]

> you'll want to stick with Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 on OS X, like I do.

The problem with that is the lack of security updates for said beta... not to mention security bugs fixes since beta that will be disclosed now that final has shipped.

Multiple homepage feature or bug?!?

[seulkiro]

I just noticed something weird. When I set the page in current tab as the home page, as in the page you see when you start Firefox, it was adding all the addresses that are currently open in the tab separated by |. And then when I restarted it, they were reloaded back in different tabs. Other than that, it works good. Most of my extensions are working ok too.

Re:Multiple homepage feature or bug?!?

[Toonbobo]

It's a feature Firefox thinks you want all of those pages to be your home page. But the same thing happened to me in 1.5 and I couldn't figure out what happened. :)

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for you, being a pedant isn't a legal handicap. You'll still have to park in a regular stall.

That would be like saying we could end racism by redefining the term race. Yes, it's technically true, but anyone with an iota of common sense will see that such a suggestion is absurd. Racism exists without regard to whether the race being descriminated against is definitively a race (especially if the racist believes the group is a race).

FF2 on Windows

[kz26]

If you have Firefox 1.5.0.7 for Windows, you will probably want to uninstall it first, delete the Program Files/Mozilla Firefox directory, then download the FULL Windows Nullsoft installer and reinstall. With the different installers, you probably want to avoid conflicts between the two versions.

Re:FF2 on Windows

[plover]

Actually, I would argue against this. I have had great success in simply allowing the installer to upgrade. All my bookmarks, stored passwords, and cookies all ported just fine. While I'd recommend a good backup first, I doubt you'll have problems serious enough to actually have to use it.

Also I have 33 extensions installed (yes, I'm a junkie.) Of those, only six were not 2.0 compatible. And all of the operating ones seem to have retained their options.

Overall, I'm amazed by the smoothness of the switch to 2.0. The only thing missing was the Pinball theme, and I fixed that myself by patching the install.rdf to believe me that 2.0 was OK (also worked for patching Cookie Button 0.8.5 extension into working under 2.0)

soooo....

[c6gunner]

Who's made themselves a portable version already? :)

Re:soooo....

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded the beta portable. http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_port able/test

Kudos #1

[no_pets]

Thanks. And I noticed that if I fuck up and delete too many tabs or the wrong one I can easily restore under History > Recently Closed Tabs.

Re:Kudos #1

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently settting browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3 in about:config brings back the old behaviour. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s I haven't tried it yet but I will, the new way sucks.

Faster

[pestilence669]

On Windows, it seems to be performing better than the last version. I'm going to install this on my Mac tonight to see if it's as fast as Safari. Firefox has always been a tad poky on the PowerPC.

Not only that...

[deesine]

Boy, I just installed 2.0 and I'm pissed (as in not drunk). The TabMixPlus extension does not work and the built-in Tabs preferences doesn't allow you to 1)get rid of the close button on every tab 2)a newly opened tab doesn't go to my home page, or any page for that matter, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that 3)after deciding to go back to version 1.5 (by Add/Remove), it turns out I no longer have a version 1.5.

Up to this point, I've been very pleased with FF. I guess every software has that moment I'll call post-honeymoon reality check. I should've known it was too good to last.

Re:Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who's annoyed that FF 2.0 can't install their favorite extension...

Many extensions are fully functional within 2.0 but simply haven't had their version compatability updated. For the immediate future, until extension authors release updated versions of their extensions, you can always set an about:config preference of extensions.checkCompatibility. This will allow you to install any extension, regardless of which FF versions the extension claims it requires.

Now, there's a very real chance that any extension not specifically updated for 2.0 may not work, but at least this little trick allows you to see for yourself (I have 5 extensions installed that weren't updated to 2.0, and all of them seem to work...as always, YMMV).

Complaints- no bittorrent download

[debrain]

Why is mozilla complaining about bandwidth, and yet not offering a bittorrent link? Surely this is the ideal candidate for a bittorrent release?

Amazing release, mind you. Great work, to all the contributers, in all the many ways they contributed to bringing Firefox to this quality of project.

Lost v1.5

[deesine]

For me, I no longer have a 1.5. Very sad, because I wanted to roll back after a couple extensions don't work.

Re:Lost v1.5

[aztektum]

http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

Any idea when the CP/M version is released?

[WillAffleckUW]

I've got some TEMPEST computers to upgrade ...

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm prejudiced against overly sensitive people. What does that make me?

Microsoft sends a congratulation cake to Mozilla

[wildzer0]

See for yourself :)

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WillAffleckUW]

Irish is also an ethnic group. Ethnicity is closely tied into race.

Well, techically, celtic peoples are much more racially mixed than others, and Irish include Pictish ancestry, especially on the western side of the island.

But, on a biological level, race is meaningless. Me, I'm a mixture of a lot of things, most of them Celtic (from places like Scotland, Wales, and Germany).

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Golradir]

Speaking of Afrikaans, where has the Afrikaans version gone?

TabMixPlus

[Malfourmed]

A new version of TabMixPlus that works with FF2 will be released within the week according to the author's note here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/

In the meantime, you can install a pre-release version of the extension here:

http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3515

To get rid of the close buttons on all tabs, go to about:config and set

browser.tabs.closeButtons

to 0 if you only want the close button on the active tab

or to 0 if you want the close button only at the right hand side of the tab bar.

Re:TabMixPlus

[FLEB]

or to 0 if you want the close button only at the right hand side of the tab bar.

(where 0 = 3)

Re:TabMixPlus

[MoriaOrc]

Not that there's anything wrong with editing about:config directly (I've done it plenty), but I found that just fine in Tools/Options/Tabbed Browsing/Display Options/Show Tab Closure Button On:[Combo Box]

The GP's other complaint that tabs always open to blank pages was an option in Tabbed Browsing/User Interface/When loading new tabs, load the:[Blank Page* | Home Page | Current Page]

It's quite possible that I only see these options because of the Tabbrowser Preferences extension (which auto-updated with the install), though. It's a pretty good extension, adds a lot of extra options to the Tabbed Browsing part of the options menu. Sometimes it's nice to be able to see a list of things to edit without having to look up what number means what.

PS: The setting for "One close button on the right side of the bar" is 3

Re:TabMixPlus

[BackwardHatClub]

With TabMixPlus not working (yet) I'm really missing a create tab button before my first tab.

Re:TabMixPlus

[MoriaOrc]

I saw an option for that, but I don't like the button (prefer Ctrl+T), so I left it alone.

Re:TabMixPlus

[Malfourmed]

Oops. *blush*

Re:TabMixPlus

[LiquidCoooled]

Since you use tabbrowser prefs I wonder if you could test something for me.
I also have it and since the update to 2.0, clicking the new Go button opens the address in a new tab, clicking again opens a new tab and so on. The expected action under all cases is to reload the data into the current tab (which is what the address bar relates to)

I have tried changing settings as much as possible but cannot seem to stop it occurring.
It only happens with the tabbrowser prefs extension enabled.

Let me know if the same occurs on yours and I will create a bug report for it.

Re:TabMixPlus

[funfail]

or to 0 if you want the close button only at the right hand side of the tab bar.

This should read "or to 3"...

Re:TabMixPlus

[MoriaOrc]

I'm pretty sure that's an option of tabbrowser preferences. Check in Options/Tabs/User Interface. The second box is called "Load the following in new tabs:" and has check boxes for URLs from the address bar (with a radio button for whether they should be loaded in foreground or background) and a check box for searches. It may be that they changed the default setting for that in the update, or something (I had it turned on anyway).

I just tested it and switching the setting works fine for me. If it is broken for you for some reason, it looks like the about:config setting browser.tab.opentabfor.urlbar is the setting this is supposed to affect. Turns out the default is still false for that, so I'm not so sure about my guess now.

Good luck, hope that helps with your problem.

Re:TabMixPlus

[LiquidCoooled]

Nope, since writing this comment I have been watching the homepage for the addin developer, on it he now states:

Everyone else: I am aware of several minor buglets with regards to the URL bar. I am researching all of them and will hopefully fix them all in the upcoming 1.3.2 release. For now, please be aware that I know about them and don't need more e-mails telling me about it ;-)

from the tabbrowser prefs home page.

Re:TabMixPlus

[LiquidCoooled]

damn submit button, missed a whole section out
I had been looking around the prefs and changed all I could but didn't get anywhere.
I hadn't bothered with about:config in this case because its as good as editing the registry and I don't want to mess things up by randomly changing values. There is only a few items within there that I feel comfortable enough changing.

Why not 2.1?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK it's one thing to call yesterday's release "2.0" -- after all it was a big improvement from 1.5.

But this today is really just an incremental release from yeseterday's. Calling it "2.0" again is a slap in the face to all of us loyal users who downloaded it yesterday and felt like we were getting something special.

I think that today's release should be called "2.1" or maybe "2.5" (or even "3.0"). What's the point of even having a version number if they make two releases with the same version? Come on guys, this is why open source can't compete in a real marketplace.

Re:Why not 2.1?

[Ash-Fox]

OK it's one thing to call yesterday's release "2.0" -- after all it was a big improvement from 1.5.

Firefox wasn't released yesterday, it was released today.

But this today is really just an incremental release from yeseterday's. Calling it "2.0" again is a slap in the face to all of us loyal users who downloaded it yesterday and felt like we were getting something special.

Today's binaries are the exact same ones that went into Firefox 2.0 RC3 I hear.

Come on guys, this is why open source can't compete in a real marketplace.

I agree, for one thing, it needs to ship late like most commercial products, rather than being available a day early.

Re:Why not 2.1?

[Legion303]

Your humor module is malfunctioning.

My gripe...

[amrittuladhar]

...is that clicking on the wheel-like thing on the top right corner no longer takes you to the Firefox update (themes / extensions etc.) page.

Re:My gripe...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Throbber extension enables you to click on the Activity Indicator (throbber), which takes you to the web site of your choice:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2821/

Great for add-ons!!

[Nahor]

We need 64-bit Firefox ASAP, how else can we open web sites with more than 4GB of content?

And more importantly, with that much accessible memory, this will allow us to use Firefox for four continuous hours instead of three before we need to restart it because of a leaking add-on!

Don't hit me, I'm just kidding, I never had any memory issue with FF, I swear!

Make inactive tabs less visible

[Matt Perry]

Add the following to your userChrome.css file to make inactive tabs less visible and the active tab stand out a bit more:

/*
  * Make un-selected tabs less visible.
  */
#browser tab:not([selected="true"]) {
  color: #555 !important;
}
#browser tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-icon,
#browser tab:not([selected="true"]) .tabs-closebutton {
  opacity: 0.6;
}

about:config

[no_pets]

Actually, I still don't like it so I changed "browser.tabs.closeButtons" to 3 and I'm happy again.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[Anonymous Coward]

Gay

Re:Buggy Release - Or is it your setup?

[Virtual_Raider]

I am running Win XP (Gasp!) and I installed yesterday's "unofficial" release in a separate directory. Both installations worked perfectly. Then today I uninstalled 2.0 and reinstalled it on top of the old 1.5.x version, and everything continues to work perfectly, including bookmarks and plugins (now collectively called add-ons together with the extensions). So it might not be Firefox but your particular machine.

Thank You!

[deesine]

+5 Karma for you: the real karma.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WilliamSChips]

True on both counts, but neither count is relevant to the way Irish people are viewed(although it matters a lot less now than when they were first coming here) both by themselves and others. Discrimination against the Irish and against Mexicans is pretty similar in form.

Collected fixes for FF2

[SuurMyy]

1. about:config
1.1 browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3
1.2 browser.backspace_action = 0

2 Getting alt+[pse...] working as in 1.X series

Short answer: Use alt+shift+[pse...]

Long answer:

This cannot be done ATM, as even the workaround only makes alt+s work, not alt+p, for example.
For the curious, you can try setting: ui.key.contentAccess = 4. But it will only get you there
half way. More information: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34971 6. Sam things
said over here: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php? topic=122226.msg780638#msg780638

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WillAffleckUW]

Um, are you sure? I think that may have been true in the past, but not so much now.

That said, more language support is always better.

Take control of your windows!

[DragonHawk]

(Notice: Lower-case 'w' in subject.)

Enter "about:config" in to the Address bar.

Filter on "dom.disable_window".

Make sure every resulting knob is set to "True".

This prevents JavaScript-spawned windows from having their title bar, address bar, tool bar, menu bar, status bar, scroll bars, or other decorations removed/disabled. Now I can move, resize, or otherwise twiddle with all the windows in my browser, the way I should be able to.

Me to web developers: They're my windows; get your grubby JavaScript off them!

Re:Take control of your windows!

[aug24]

I totally agree, and thanks for the hints.

However, it's still not enough :( There are still new windows being opened when I want all popups in tabs. Back to the extensions... (thank dog for extensions...)

Justin.

Re:Take control of your windows!

[Tim C]

Me to web developers: They're my windows; get your grubby JavaScript off them!

Don't just tell us - tell the information architects, clients, etc. 9 times out of 10 it's out of my hands, no matter how much I explain that it's a bad thing to annoy your users.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WilliamSChips]

Well, not now, true, but for some reason slashdot trolls are still carrying over really old racism. Oh wait, they're Slashdot trolls.
And yes, more language support is always better.

Ooh. Aah.

[snurfle]

Wow. The new firefox looks just like an error box!

firefox.exe - Entry Point Not Found
the procedure entry point JS_DHashtableoperate could not be located in the dynamic link library JS3250.dll

This is truly a wonderful improvement.

How do I go back to the older version?

I thought they were done beta testing it?

Optimized builds

[Danathar]

Does anybody know where to get optimized builds for specific processors and on specific OS's?

Re:Optimized builds

[hawaiian717]

Try the Third Party/Unofficial Builds forum at MozillaZine:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=42

Wierd Timing of the Release during the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...so looking at the site 2 hours earlier and found no notice that FF 2 was actually released, just the rc3...and now the full 2.0 is officially released, intresting timing. you know it like 6 here and I think I looked at the site at 4. Didn't know they'd want to make that change like that in the middle of the day, there in cali right so thats really mid day, wierd. Developers these days, when will we understand proper timing :)

Re:Wierd Timing of the Release during the day

[DarthBibble]

It was scheduled to be released this afternoon.

My First Annoyance

[KJACK98]

I'm used to going to a web page and middle mouse clicking all the links that I find interesting, previously they would nicely open in the next tab, now if I have a dozen windows open, they aren't opening in the next tab anymore. You have to scroll across to the right and find the web page - I find that very annoying - more clicks. In this scenario they should of scrolled the other tabs to the left instead and continue placing the ones i selected on the tab bar. Hopefully the extensions will fix this scenerio.

Official release? Official comment!

[CCFreak2K]

With the official release finally here, I'll make my definitive comment on it:

Sure, it's got some new features, but...

...it still feels like the same old Firefox.

Sure, the idea is to keep it simple and not put too much shit in it, but like others have stated, it doesn't really feel like a 2.0 release. There's just not a whole lot all that new to me after a few days. The only thing I see different is that two of my extensions (Fasterfox and Tabbrowser Preferences) have been marked incompatable (although half of the behavior of the latter has been integrated, it seems). So, take away that, and we have...Firefox 1.6. Congratulations, guys.

P.S, I stand my by earlier comment that Firefox 2.0 be officially released two years to the day that 1.0 was. So close. ;)

Where's the Bittorrent?

[SailorBob]

Where's the bittorrent? Mozilla has a bittorrent page, but it hasn't been updated.

More tweaks for Firefox 2

[Anonymous Coward]

If you close a tab that was opened by a link in a different tab, the focus will go back to the owner tab. Firefox 1.5 would go to the previous tab that was right next to the tab that you just closed. If you want Firefox 2 to have the old behavior you can change this in about:config
browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose set to FALSE

If you are like me and you can't stand the pulldown arrow that shows a list of all tabs that are open, you can get rid of that by creating a userChrome.css file in your profile chrome folder.
Just put the following in that file: .tabs-alltabs-stack { display: none !important; }

After you save the userChrome.css and then reboot firefox that little arrow pulldown to show all open tabs will be gone.

you slashdotters are silly

[circletimessquare]

firefox is only up to version 2

but ie is up to version 7!

so ie is 7-2...

um...

that's 5x more betterer!

Re:you slashdotters are silly

[sconest]

No, you're wrong. IE is only 3.5 (7/2) better.

Obligatory

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Obligatory Maddox reference.

Mozilla Calendar Extension Broke

[scottnews]

OK, Mozilla Calendar is broke. Good thing I tested it before my wife, who actually uses it, updated.

Spell check is very cool.

Blur

[wrackedmind]

Is it just me or even with the first posters color saturation add-on the back, forward, stop and refresh buttons are oddly blurred? It hurts my eyes a bit:( I would like to thank the creators of this web browser though. It has more than doubled the time between OS reinstalls. The built in spell check is a godsend!

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[killjoe]

There is no such thing as race. Genetically there can be greater variation between one member or a race and another then a member of another race.

Race is a made up thing. A silly thing. Humans do not have a subspecies.

Also religion is not a race. Speaking a language does not make you a race. Worshiping a god does not make you another race. Living in a country does not make you a race.

There is no such thing as a race. Let's stop using this term. It's useless.

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[WilliamSChips]

Race is a social construct. It's the engine of discrimination. It exists because stupid people think it has anything to do with anything. It's really a series of epithets(not to be confused with a series of tubes)

Carries over from previous FF installs

[bjdevil66]

Yeah, I was disappointed to see this gone from the UI, but it is still available via about:config . The key is network.cookie.cookieBehavior, default value is 0 (all cookies allowed). Change this to 1 (no 3rd party cookies). More info from the MozillaZine knowledgebase.

When I went into make this change, it was set to 1, so if you've upgraded to 2.0 from a previous Firefox install and you'd already selected the no 3rd party cookies option, this setting is carried over. (I've checked this with a clean install and it is indeed '0' by default). I wonder why they made that choice (removing the UI option to block the 3rd party cookies).

Statistics

[Web Goddess]

Wow 55 hidden comments at the top, that is a record, AFAIK, for viewing onlhy +2 or greater.

<P>Anyhoo... I recently compiled some lo>g stats <a href="http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot /~3/41073596/article.pl">this thread</S>] and so I wanted to share some stats on the percentage of people who actually use FireFox...

For one month, 150,000 cgi (only) HITS...

Of 150,ooo (CGI only) hits in October...

144,000 grep positive for Mozilla...
130,000 grep positive for Windows...
50,000 grep positive for Firefox...

Yes, I know those numbers don't add up.

Wendy

Re:Keith Curtis 2.0 Officially Released

[kypper]

Perfect for jury duty.

World Firefox Day

[pcmaniac]

What about the names of "Friends" collected on the World Firefox Day?!?!
The click on the Friends link in the About window just opens the website.. http://www.worldfirefoxday.com/en/

It's not nice to forget your friends mozilla..

Adblock Plus + Filterset.g = The future of the web

[seanthenerd]

Mod parent up! For those of you who still actually see ads, I highly recommend these extensions. I see about one ad a week, usually on some really small regional website that has their own ad system. Think about it - how many ads does the average surfer see in a week? These extensions will have almost as much of an impact on your browsing as switching to Firefox did in the first place. I've simply installed them both then hidden all their toolbar icons/messages/etc. because they simply work. I cannot recommend them enough. Kudos to their developers.

this is because

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla inc is a microsoft partner (stealth) company, and firefox is a windows product. It is that simple, it is that obvious. It is primarily designed to run on windows, and the intent is to keep people on microsoft windows. That they sort of make and release for other operating systems is a sop to claim they are open source friendly and "neutral", which is complete swinesoak. Moz is *no different from any other MS centric vendor*, and why they continue to get so much cred in front of this clear evidence is baffling. There is still to this day no credible statistical evidence that use of FF by wndows users is resulting in any significant "switch" to open source operating systems, in fact, it is to the contrary, it is keeping people ON windows. If it was released for only open source operating systems, people would have been forced to at least contemplate going to them because of security issues, especially over the last 2-3 years. It also helps MS dispel "monopoly" grumblings.

Spell Checker

[ricardo_nz]

The spell checker is great. Though they appear to have forgotten to add Firefox to the dictionary.

Scroll lag is killing me

[Anonymous Coward]

Been using 2.0 now for a few hours, and I'm so annoyed I'm ready to switch to a different browser. EVERY web site I go to which requires scrolling, after the page has loaded and I start scrolling down, about two seconds into the scroll the page freezes, then unfreezes a couple seconds later and jumps to where the scrolling should have taken it.

Try it at http://news.google.com/ Immediately after the page finishes loading, start scrolling slowly and see if it doesn't stop, then jump.

Re:Scroll lag is killing me

[DragonTHC]

it's your computer.

I'm running firefox in 1080p and I have no lag

Re:Scroll lag is killing me

[Anonymous Coward]

I never had this problem with any of the 1.5 versions. I don't think my computer has gotten any less powerful than it was this morning.

Re:Scroll lag is killing me

[Eideewt]

What OS are you using? I'm not seeing it no matter how I scroll in the Linux version.

Re:Scroll lag is killing me

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP sp2
on a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 with 1gb RAM

Re:Scroll lag is killing me

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP sp2
on a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 with 1gb RAM

Not seeing any scroll lag on a P4 1.8 GHz with 512 MB RAM, WinXP Pro SP2. Used http://news.google.com/ just like you mentioned. It's your computer, but it might not necessarily be the hardware.

Bah Dum. Shhhhh

[zippthorne]

"Using Bittorrent is a little redundant."

Congrats on your double pun!

Re:Adblock Plus + Filterset.g = The future of the

[glpierce]

Happy to help.

Inline spell checking

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Image Labeler, prepare my number one position!!!

I'm gonna get flamed so bad for this...

[__aawdrj2992]

I agree it looks nice, but when I first saw it the first thing out of my mouth was: "It looks exactly like Opera."

At least they toned down that ugly beige color.

How come 1.5 doesn't update to 2.0?

[Ka D'Argo]

Maybe I'm spoiled by letting FF update itself in the last few version updates but I can't seem to make it autoupdate from 1.5.5.whatever to 2.0

Re:How come 1.5 doesn't update to 2.0?

[Despero]

Firefox 2.0 won't come through Software Update for a few weeks, and even then, it will be optional. Software Update was made mainly for stability and security updates, not major feature additions.

So if you want Firefox 2.0 anytime soon, I suggest that you head on over to www.getfirefox.com and grab it for yourself.

I know, it is kinda disappointing for me too. I just loved the automation of it all.

Accidental closing of tabs

[jesterzog]

More importantly, the decision to go this way seems to be making it much easier to accidentally close a tab when simply trying to switch between them. Suddenly the tab-switching bar is interspersed with close buttons. I'll be adjusting it in about:config straight away, but I'm a little concerned that as well as making it a default behaviour, there's not even an option visible in the preferences dialog for people to change it.

In defence of the devs, I guess there was an entire open development process in which to raise this earlier.

Re:Accidental closing of tabs

[Legion303]

It strikes me that the majority of complaints I've seen about 2.0 are from people who either haven't looked through the options, or who haven't looked closely enough. For instance, "Disable the close button on background (unfocused) tabs" sounds pretty self-explanatory. Whether it was a good idea for them to leave that unchecked is up for debate, but it's not as if you have to write a new extension to enable it.

Re:Accidental closing of tabs

[jesterzog]

For instance, "Disable the close button on background (unfocused) tabs" sounds pretty self-explanatory.

I can see this in about:config, but where is it in the options dialog? (Keeping in mind that the vast majority of people likely to get frustrated by accidental tab closures will be people who don't know about about:config.) I'm using Firefox 2.0 right now, and the four options I have in the Tabs section are to "Warn when closing multiple tabs", "Warn when opening multiple tabs that might slow down Firefox", "Always show the tab bar", or to "Switch to a new tab immediately when opening".

Re:Accidental closing of tabs

[Legion303]

"I can see this in about:config, but where is it in the options dialog?"

Tools > Options > Tabbed Browsing > Display Options.

Crash!

[robpoe]

I've had it crash twice or so on me now.

Both times, it was watching a video clip embedded in the browser (I think it's Media Player Classic).

So probably not FF fault..

Memory usage really is better

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 107 tabs in 4 windows open right now and it is using only 300Mb of memory (after freshly minimizing and restoring it).

Inline spell checking is great! Except...

[slightlyunruly]

...the British dictionary doesn't know about the word 'Firefox'...!

:)

Re:Inline spell checking is great! Except...

[radja]

personally, I don't like inline spellchecking. set extensions.spellcheck.inline.max-misspellings to 0 to disable it.

craziness...

[opc.chr0n1c]

i never knew about the about:config thing and just tried it.. WHY WHY WHY does my web browser have THAT MANY OPTIONS!!?? geesh i just wanna read slashdot!

I agree

[missing000]

All this two.oh talk is bunk. This is clearly more than a point level release though, so I suggest a new naming convention. We should lobby to have it named after a defunct car. This release is called Yugo. Next up is Chevette followed by the Pinto, the Nino and the Santo Maria. Oops, got off track.

Let's just take the current system and make it fractional. This release should now be known as 1 and 5/8. No decimal notation anymore. I can't wait for 33 and 1/3!

OK, name it whatever you want, just don't call it vista :)

Not sure if I'll upgrade

[Mike_K]

I posted a super-quick one-benchmark review of IE 7 here:

http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/664690/

I think it's only fair to do the same for Firefox 2.0.

I loaded about 40 tabs that I am currnently using in Firefox 1.5 (two windows) into Firefox 2.0. The memory usage was about 170mb, while Firefox 1.5 is ~140mb. (These are still mostly the same tabs as with IE 7, and that used over 400mb). 30mb increase isn't a big deal for me, but I would like to know what causes such an increase, and if it's worth it. The browser was still rather fast and responsive, so I don't really mind.

On an unrelated note, I installed Tab Mix Plus testing release in FF2 just to be able to make the tabs smaller and get SessionSaver to work. It's good, but I don't like the way the tab scroll buttons can sit on top of a tab. Plus I actually liked the default FF2 method of having one button on each end of tab bar, depending on whether I wanted to scroll tabs to the left or right.

Overall, I'm not sure if I'll be switching or if I'll stay with 1.5 for a while. 1.5 has been really stable for me lately, and I don't necessarily want to mess with that.

Oh, and it's beyond me why FF2 bittorrent isn't up on http://bittorrent.mozilla.org/ yet, but that's a totally different issue. They must have too much bandwidth. I went there to download the installer, and I was offered the file from a Japanese mirror! (I'm in US) And on a related note, I thought that including a bittorrent client in Opera was a little overkill, but I've now changed my mind. I believe that bittorrent should replace ftp and http as a default large file transport method. I would really like to see a very light bittorrent client built into FireFox. (Not an extension - with the default download)

m

Re:Not sure if I'll upgrade

[bunratty]

The memory usage was about 170mb, while Firefox 1.5 is ~140mb. (These are still mostly the same tabs as with IE 7, and that used over 400mb). 30mb increase isn't a big deal for me, but I would like to know what causes such an increase, and if it's worth it.

If you're looking at the Mem Usage column in the Windows Task Manager, perhaps some of the memory Firefox 1.5 was using got swapped out to disk, making memory usage appear lower. Compare the VM Size instead.

it IS "Lock and load"

[mysticgoat]

My deer rifle is a 30-06 Remmington slide action. I'm a southpaw and a lefthanded bolt was more than I could afford when I got the gun (used): the slide action is ambidextrous. It has a 4 round clip. I've owned it for 31 years now. I don't use it much any more, but at one time it helped stretch the grocery budget.

I learned to shoot from a couple guys who had grown up hunting in the 1930s and who learned to shoot all over again when in the service in World War II. Both saw more action on the Pacific islands than they would ever talk about.

The litany they taught included these steps (done just before the first steps of the hunt)

1. check the receiver for crud
2. check the clip for crud and alignment of the top round
3. check safety is on
4. insert clip into receiver
5. LOCK clip into place by slamming it with the heel of your hand
6. LOAD the first round into the chamber (in my case, work the slide)
7. check the safety is on (again)

I doubt that either of those guys saw any of the John Wayne war movies (they liked his westerns though). But I'm pretty sure neither one would have thought "Lock and load, son" was wrong or laughable. It is the way it was done.

Sorry about the rant. But this argument among people who have never had to worry about extracting a jammed live round from a rifle because the shooter hadn't locked the clip into place before trying to load the chamber has grown tiresome.

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[Cederic]

LOCK clip into place by slamming it with the heel of your hand

So the guys working in the armoury on an RAF base were lying when they told me to never ever slam the magazine (clip) with your hand as you risk causing damage to the magazine, the receiver or the ammunition, increasing your chances of a jam?

Push it firmly into place. Don't slam it.

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[lucifig]

Are the guys in the RAF armory working with equipment made in the 30's caked in dirt and blood? If not then their advice really isn't applicable to his example now is it?

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[mysticgoat]

The long guns the RAF used in WWII were descendants of the .303 Lee Enfield, not the .30-06 Garand. Very different designs with different strengths and weaknesses-- I'd expect a difference in the standard operating procedure. The Lee Enfield guns were designed around working the bolt action quickly without taking your eye off the target and they excel at rapid fire accuracy. The .30-06 semi-automatics were designed for good accuracy with less training and less field maintenance.

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[Cederic]

Interesting comparison. The weapons in use at the time I was given the advice were the 7.62mm SLR (think semi-auto version of M16) and the SA-80. We did have some .303s but they were rendered inoperable and were used for drill and display purposes.

Given how easily bits fell off the SA-80 I'm not surprised we were encouraged to be gentle with them :)

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[commanderfoxtrot]

Interesting comparison. The weapons in use at the time I was given the advice were the 7.62mm SLR (think semi-auto version of M16) and the SA-80. We did have some .303s but they were rendered inoperable and were used for drill and display purposes.

Just to clarify for other readers: the M16 is not 7.62mm- it's 5.56mm like the SA80. In fact the magazines are interchangeable.

Lucky, as the only time I used an M16 it kept getting stoppages and I switched over to an SA80. (Yes, both rifles were maintained very well- given the reliability record of the M16 I must have just been unlucky.)

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[Cederic]

Ok, you made me go and research. The 7.62mm SLR was the L1A1, and indeed absolutely nothing to do with the 5.56mm M16. Sorry for misleading people.

The SA80 still feels like a toy gun in comparison though :(

Re:it IS "Lock and load"

[commanderfoxtrot]

Toy gun? Perhaps, but it's much more accurate than the M16, even over open sights. Adding the SUSAT makes life even better.

Milk girl's calculation

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5 + (1.5 - 1.0) == 2.0? That's the worst kind of milk girl's calculation I've seen in a long time (I mean, since I heard some people claiming that the 21st century started in 2001 rather than 2000, so it must have been 5 or 6 years). You should go back to you arithmetics studies asap...

Resizing search box ?

[jne_oioioi]

I seem not to be able to resize the search box/bar any more? I like it to be situated far left on the bookmarks toolbar, and it's a pain as it now takes some 66% of the toolbar space and my bookmarks are pushed to the right. If I remember correctly I was previously able to rclick->customize and move the elements around and then resize them at will. What needs to be done now to make the address/ search bars a bit more reasonable sizewise. Other than that the 2.0 seems really great and a speedup is apparent, and the browser seems more responsive.

Extensions Not Compatible

[Bhavesh]

Some of the extensions are not compatible with version 2.0 However, lets wait until new version of those extensions comes out.

Dupe

[Zwicky]

Dupe!

Oh wait....

Access Keys are broken

[holgie]

One of the key features that I used to promote the use of twiki is now gone.
editing a twiki web page and saving it used to be:

[Alt-e] [tab] [tab] type type type [Alt-s]

But in 2.0 'access keys' is now either removed or overridden - either way, I think it's a bad change

Spellchecker

[Anonymous Coward]

This works great, BUT if you are in a multiple language country, or you routinely fill in forms in more than one language, you're going to need extra dictionaries. There's not much help in the WIKI on this, so to make things easier for non-monolinguists, just simply right click in a form field and "Languages", "Add dictionaries". You'll need to restart Firefox afterwards, but you can change the dictionary for the current page using right click again once you are in a field on a form. Magnificent for anyone learning a language, or not completely confident (even in their own). Hence this entry in Slashdot ;)
Incidentally, Firefox, Slashdot, and WIKI are NOT in the English dictionary.

Same article as yesterday

[matt me]

Yesterday's article (MD5): c77be61ada8474205356f10f60731dda
Today's article (MD5): c77be61ada8474205356f10f60731dda

Old bugs?

[l0cust]

I am not sure if they are related or not (or even if they are bugs) but I have faced them with the old versions and just came across them on 2.0 as well. A lot of the times when a site has not finished loading completely, ctrl+clicking kind of hangs the browser for a few secs and then opens the page in the same page instead of opening it in a new tab. I always end up right clicking and going to the 'Open Link in new Tab' option in that case which does not seem to have the same problem.

The second problem is specific to the new Slashdot Discussion System. When the page has not finished loading completely, clicking on a reply opens a blank page with just one word "false" (must be some return value) instead of expanding that reply.

Anyone else faced these problems? Other than them, I am loving 2.0 (just waiting for the Black Japan theme to get updated but the default one is pretty decent for a change). 2.0 seems snappier to me. Really hated the default tabs settings but, after messing around with the config a bit like most of the people, it is almost back to 1.5 behaviour so all is well except that hideous drop-down button on the right. Is there a way to remove it somehow?

Re:Cache settings

[bunratty]

If it's a cache, then there needs to be some way to configure it to not eat up a large chunk of my RAM

There is. You can configure both the memory cache and back/forward page cache to be smaller.

Firefox 3

[astralbat]

Can't wait until Firefox 3 when they start using Gecko 1.9 which renders pages using the Cairo graphics API. I hope it speeds up rendering significantly - even for those with poorer than average graphics chips.

Where the hell is Thunderbird 2.0?

[Oshkoshjohn]

I have been using Thunderbird since it became available. Anyone know why Thunderbird is not on the toolbar of FF 2.0? I got it onto the IE7 toolbar just fine. I use both FF and IE because some web sites will not load properly in FF.

Changes ...

[jc42]

Well, right off I noticed a change: The "Bookmarks" menu no longer has a "Manage Bookmarks" item; instead there's an "Organize Bookmarks" item. That's a significant improvement if I ever saw one! However, the window you get isn't called "Bookmarks Organizer"; it's still called "Bookmarks Manager". Oops. Time to make a bug report.

Barging ahead, though, I quickly discovered another change. It used to be that when I held down the mouse (or trackpad) button for 1/2 second or so, I got a menu. This doesn't happen now. Instead, no matter how long I hold it down, when I release the button I get some random event. With links, it follows them. With Bookmarks Manager you get the "folder" opened or closed. But no menu. Instead, I find that I have to use CTRL-click to get the menu.

Now, this isn't a real big deal. But I have had some fun in a few discussions pointing out that one of the minor advantages of the mozilla suite of apps was that a lot of little things are more time efficient than in other browsers, and this was usually my first example. You can do operations involving that "context menu" with one hand, with no need to put down your pencil or coffee cup (or whatever you're holding in the other hand ;-). Now, with the new FF, you have to have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. No more can you just click-pause-release to get the menu.

One of the standard observations from the old efficiency-expert field is that real efficiency isn't just coming up with one flashy change; it's more often the result of a lot of small changes, none very significant taken singly, which add up to a lot of time. It seems that once again, FF has made a small change that slightly decreases usability. Not a biggie by itself, but one more small step among many that has slowly eroded its original efficiency (if that term can even be used with a straight face when talking about web browsers).

I wonder if there's a config tool somewhere that can (efficiently ;-) remap various things on the keyboard and mouse, so that a user can change little things like this? It would be really nice, especially since I do a lot of web testing against the flock of browsers that I've installed, if I could make their UIs more like each other. Then I wouldn't have the constant time waste of stopping to think (or consult my notes) about how to do something in this particular browser. Or I wouldn't do something without thinking, say "Damn!", back out of what it did, and then try to remember how this browser requires that I do it.

Such a tool could be handy in converting IE users, too, if it could provide a packaged UI whose keyboard/mouse actions mimic those of IE. Then a user with IE experience wouldn't see FF as a clumsy, clunky browser that "doesn't do things right" due to different keyboard mappings. And when they get used to the radical idea of using a non-MS tool, you could point out to them that it might be even easier if they redefined a few of the keys to give them one-stroke ways of doing the things they do a lot.

I keep dreaming of tools that don't waste my time futzing with a complex, confusing UI that's slightly different in every window on my screen.

Of course, all this may exist somewhere, but I haven't found it.

WHERE IS THE LINK TO FIREFOX 1.5

[t35t0r]

They should have maintained the link to the 1.5 versions on their main website. Most people don't know about ftp and doing a google search will get you nothing off the first page of hits. 2.0 breaks lots of plugins like tab mix plus.

Am I a total idiot?

[MotorMachineMercenar]

I can't find a download link on getfirefox.com. I don't want to read about the wonderful features (3 links to those). I don't want to learn about support, add-ons or developers. I just want a BIG FAT LINK TO DOWNLOAD FIREFOX 2.0.

I know, it's not a big deal. But it is. If I can't find a download link on _the_ Firefox website, I'm positive there's thousands of people who can't. At least I know to google for it or go to other websites.

Alt + S

[zenithcoolest]

Does anyone know how to get this functionality in FF 2.0?

Re:Not to get picky ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to get picky, but this drives me mad: It's "My brother and me" not "My brother and I. You wouldn't say "It drives I mad," now would you?

That's like "Me posted something my brother said to I" or "Me should be careful when criticizing other people lest they do it back to I" or ...

AC

Re:Cache settings

[Silent_Fire]

Set browser.cache.memory.capacity to 0 Set browser.cache.memory.enable to false Set config.trim_on_minimize to true Disabled all plugins, and closed firefox. Set all the settings suggested by the article you pointed to. Disabled all plugins. Open to Google/Firefox start page: 24M (old 24M) Reply to slashdot post: 30M (old 32M) second tab to cnn: 38M (old 34M) 58 more tabs: 102M (old 94M) Closing everything but slashdot: 58M (old 70M) second tab to lj: 58M (old 74M) minimize Firefox: 4M (no old value) restore Firefox: 12M (no old value) So, this is definitely an improvement (and hopefully won't change too much after I enable all my plugins again). However, if Firefox can be cut down to 12M after I minimize and restore it, why won't it just give up that memory earlier? The minimize/restore trick is reported to only work on Windows boxes, too, so any *nix user should expect to give up a large chunk of their system memory if they want to keep Firefox running for any length of time on their nice stable system. It's not quite a memory leak anymore for me since it gets fixed after I minimize it, but Firefox definitely counts as a huge memory hog, and I shouldn't have to minimize and restore to get it to give some of that memory back to the system.

I'm upgrading to 1.5.x

[StealingFromPirates]

Until Tab Mix Plus is available for 2 I'm upgrading to 1.5.x. I cannot tolerate the browser stealing application focus... I do use other applications in my multitasking OS. When an upload is running in any tab and I minimize FX eventually (often too quickly) it'll pop back up as the ontop application tempting me to loudly curse at the LCD. Tab Mix Plus contained this 'feature' nicely. I am pleased to see that I can open a dozen tabs and eventually FX will release memory, but I'm not thrilled that the cost of this development is savage CPU domination. I can live with 200-900 megs ram usage to free up some power.

Re:Cache settings

[bunratty]

I still don't see how you reach the conclusion that "Firefox definitely counts as a huge memory hog" without trying the same set of steps on other browsers too see how much memory they use. Would you say that IE or Opera are memory hogs if they also use up to 100 MB of memory?

Re:Cache settings

[Silent_Fire]

I have no problems with an application using a lot of memory. I have problems with it failing to give that memory back to the system when it is no longer needed. It is clear that after all but one of the tabs are closed, Firefox doesn't need to keep 70MB of memory. The fact that it keeps that memory around makes it a huge memory hog.

I don't have Opera installed, and don't have IE7 with tabs, so I haven't tested either of them in a similar environment. If I found that they also kept large chunks of memory when they didn't need it, I would call them memory hogs too.

That should be an addon

[Don Giovanni]

eg: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aaddons.mozil la.org+print+OR+printing+click+OR+resize&client=Sl ashdorkFox-3.14543153451345134513