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Nine Reasons To Skip Firefox 2.0
grandgator writes, "Hyped by a good deal of fanfare, outfitted with some new features, and now available for download, Firefox 2.0 has already passed 2 million downloads in less than 24 hours. However, a growing number of users are reporting bugs, widening memory leaks, unexpected instability, poor compatibility, and an overall experience that is inferior to that offered by prior versions of the browser. Expanding on these ideas, this list compiles nine reasons why it might be a good idea to stick with 1.5 until the debut of 3.0, skipping the "poorly badged" 2.0 release completely." OK, maybe it's 10 reasons. An anonymous reader writes, "SecurityFocus reports an unpatched highly critical vulnerability in Firefox 2.0. This defect has been known since June 2006 but no patch has yet been made available. The developers claimed to have fixed the problem in 1.5.0.5 according to Secunia, but the problem still exists in 2.0 according to SecurityFocus (and I have witnessed the crash personally). If security is the main reason users should switch to Firefox, how do we explain known vulnerabilities remaining unpatched across major releases?"
Update: 10/30 12:57 GMT by KD : Jesse Ruderman wrote in with this correction. "The article claims that Firefox 2 shipped with a known security hole This is incorrect; the hole is fixed in both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Firefox 2. The source of the confusion is that the original version of this report demonstrated two crash bugs, one of which was a security hole and the other of which was just a too-much-recursion crash. The security hole has been fixed but we're still trying to figure out the best way to fix the too-much-recursion crash. The report has been updated to clear up the confusion."
Update: 10/30 12:57 GMT by KD : Jesse Ruderman wrote in with this correction. "The article claims that Firefox 2 shipped with a known security hole This is incorrect; the hole is fixed in both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Firefox 2. The source of the confusion is that the original version of this report demonstrated two crash bugs, one of which was a security hole and the other of which was just a too-much-recursion crash. The security hole has been fixed but we're still trying to figure out the best way to fix the too-much-recursion crash. The report has been updated to clear up the confusion."
The only thing impressive about this statement is exactly how far your standards have been lowered. You actually feel that it is incredible or unusual to be able to leave an application running for a week?
When I've been using javascript-heavy sites (eg, google stuff), safari gets a little slow after it's been running for about a month. And I consider that a failing on its part, not something to brag about. The fact that firefox runs for a whole shiny week for you should be a point of shame, not pride.
Well, it seems like every version of Firefox still has issues with espn.com.
Its definitely the most reliable site to crash and/or generate 100% cpu time on any recent version (1.5.x and 2.0).
Just go browse to one of the scoreboard pages a few times. It really likes to do this on Mac.
Maybe it's because you aren't surfing. If you actually use firefox, instead of simply letting it remain minimized at about:blank for a month, it will quickly use ridiculous amounts of memory. Here it's at 305MB and counting... Oops, just checked, it's now 306MB. And I haven't really done anything apart from writing this in the meantime.
I have to second that. I was very surprised that Firefox 2 restores ALL session - I mean, not only cookies, urls, and that stuff, but WHOLE state. Where you have been logged in, there you are.
For lot of advanced users it is a must. It is whole reason to use FF 2, nevermind other new features.
And yes, FF 2 has bugs. But in contrary of IE, I have NO doubts that sooner or later they will be fixed.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The well known memory leak issue, which causes the Firefox browser to consume ever increasing amounts of RAM, eventually leading to sluggish performance and crashes, has been carried over into yet another generation. This is despite an enormous amount of public commentary and user requests for resolution prior to release of a new version of Firefox
For how long major applications like Firefox will have memory leaks? can we please stop using C altogether and use a decent garbage-collected language like D (there are other languages around, but D is as close to C as possible)...