Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 3 In Alpha
illeism writes to note that, a mere six weeks after the launch of Firefox 2, Firefox 3 is now available in alpha. CNet reports that it is currently recommended only for software developers and testers. The big change is the upgraded Gecko rendering engine (the UI is unchanged from version 2). From the CNet article: "Firefox 3 will include some significant changes. It uses version 1.9 of the Gecko rendering engine — which itself hasn't been released yet but which includes the Cairo graphics layer. Gecko 1.9 has been in development since before the release of Firefox 2, and it provides vector-based rendering on all platforms. As the Gecko 1.9 road map explains, Cairo will 'bring modern, hardware-accelerated 2D-graphics capabilities to the whole of the Web without requiring proprietary plug-ins or rendering obsolete the broad and rich set of Web-authoring techniques developed over the past decade.'"
Why ? To each program its own target.
KDE has never been "for older hardware". However, perfectly nice & actively developed Desktop Environment exist for older hw (xfce by ex.).
Same here, OpenSource is about making use of older codebase, so nothing prevents anybody to patch FF2.x !
One of the great strengths of OSS compared to proprietary software is the ability to make use of older hardware.
This doesn't happen automagically when you license something by GPL (or similar). It takes work. The strength of OSS is that no one is stopping you from making it work on older hardware. All the code for older firefox versions, and the code for gecko 1.9 is available. Just because Mozilla team is dropping support doesn't mean they won't add patches to fix this if someone else does it. Now compare that with say Windows Vista - you have no way of patching that to run on an old 386.
Moral of the story... don't be so quick to bitch about stuff.
This is more than ie7 was, ie7 was a frontend change with only a handful of bugfixes in the backend, and even the top 10 list of worst bugs was not fully fixed.
While I understand your gripe, let me introduce you to Firefox 2.0. It was just released, and likely going to be around for a long enough time to outlast your computer with the P200 chip w/MMX technology that still has windows 98 installed.
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
I'm aware of xfce and blackbox and the likes, they are nice, but if you want to run mainstream software that require KDE libraries, you're still hosed.
But in the case of FF for Windows, the problem is that Win9x users (and there are many left) will find themselves in the same situation they were with IE: they'll have to keep running the latest older version of the browser that works with their OS, which will quickly become out of date. I'm sure the FF/Gecko guys have perfectly good technical reasons to leave the old platform behind, but in a sense I hope someone will fork off a Win9x tree of FF and keep developing it, otherwise it would mean OSS is no better than Microsoft with regard to software obsolescence.
So how long are they suppose to be supporting the Win9x OSes? 2 more years? 5? 10? 20? Until there aren't any more Win9x users? But if all of the Win9x users have their OSS software continue to support Win9x, what incentive do they have to upgrade? They obviously don't care about bugs or viruses if they're still using Win9x software after all these years.
I have a feeling that the 2.x.x branch of Firefox will live on for a very long time, and will continue having bugfix and security updates. If you're running Win98, it will certainly not be the weak point in your system in terms of security or stability! My point is that if by your standards you consider Win98 good enough to use, there will always be a version of Firefox that far exceeds your standards. And I mean, by many miles.
Shame really, 2000 is a decent OS (and I'm still going to have it around for a bit.)
But I guess it's time to start getting on the horse with Linux, because it's also the last MS OS I'll be using.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Adding tabs was a huge change to the IE application model.
The rendering engine was updated for efficiency and standards compliance (which is much better now, if still not yet where you'd like it to be)
Things like anti-phishing, new security models, and a new plug-in interface are features that 'go down to the metal'
IE7 was very substantial. I'm writing this on FF2.0 and I have to say: The IE7 upgrade was far more successful than FF2. I still believe that Firefox is a better browser over all, but not by very much. The only reason I'm still using FF is the extensions. There are just things that aren't available as IE Plugins yet that I would miss too much to fix. Funny enough, FireFox has be in vendor lock-in.
I'd say that the FireFox 2.0 upgrade was a debacle. There are so many things that I dislike about this release. I know I could go back to 1.5 but thats a PITA, too. Some of the many flaws with 2.0 are:
1. The "quick find" menu. When I 'find as I type' it no longer opens-up the actual "find" bar that allows me to highlight/move next/move previous. Instead, it opens a USELESS quick find bar and I have to press ctrl-f to get the full find-bar. This is so idiotic it's difficult to put it into words. There is absolutely no good reason for this. The quick-find takes up as much screen real-estate and my guess is that it takes up just as much resources.
2. The absolutely HORRIBLE options menu. In addition to being visually unappealing, it's horribly convoluted. I now have to click 10 times to do what I used to do in 2 clicks. Changing proxy settings is an example.
3. Ugly graphics. IE7 is just clearly more beautiful. For that matter, FF1.5 is clearly more beautiful. I don't know who created these things (the 'home' icon in particular) but somebody really should have said 'thanks but no thanks.'
4. Why change terminology? Extensions are now Add-Ons. Will they be plug-ins in the next release? BHOs after that? It took me 3 minutes after I upgraded to find the extension control panel.
5. More in-built functionality that I don't need. Like a phishing filter. This shouldn't be in IE, either, but DEFINITELY not in firefox.
6. I dislike having close buttons on each tab. I thought I would like it, but in reality, when I want to close multiple tabs now I have to keep moving my mouse to do so. Before, I could just click, click, click and close 3 tabs. I liked that much better.
What's even worse is that they didn't actually fix the things that would really make this browser better:
1. Memory Foot print. Right now, I have 2 tabs open (one is gmail) and about a dozen extensions. Firefox is using 101MB of RAM.
2. Extensions are not in a 'protected' mode. A misbehaving extension can still leak memory and bring down my entire browser. This infuriates me to no end when it happens.
3. No ability to see what extension has crashed. The recommended solution is to disable extensions one at a time. I should not have to do that.
4. When one tab is 'busy' (opening a PDF, for example) the entire browser window freezes. This is a tough one, I understand, but not impossible.
In summary, FireFox 2.0 was a step backwards for the browser. I sincerely hope they produce better results with FF3.