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Firefox 3.0 Preview
Brian Heater passed us a link to a PC World preview of the upcoming Firefox 3.0 release. In addition to the usual smoother UI, bug fixes, and feature updates, Firefox 3.0 will introduce several new components that should expand offline Web application functionality. The inclusion of DOM Storage, an offline execution model, and synchronization should all work together to allow for wider adoption of software like Google Apps at the end-user level. "As the breadth and depth of the competing applications expand, perhaps Microsoft's 90-percent stranglehold on the preinstalled and post-PC-purchase installation suite market will loosen, if only a bit. Then, too, if Windows Vista is any indication of what lies ahead, the company's software will continue to require ever more awe-inspiring hardware--a far cry from the light and nimble Web-based applications Mozilla engineers envision." The piece covers more than just the new functionality, of course, and should be of interest to anyone looking forward to 'Gran Paradiso.'
Is there anyone other than me who wants my browser to just be a browser?
/frank
Why do I have to browse the web on something that wants to be an applications platform, an office suite, a local filesystem browser, and a dessert topping? Don't you remember that the original advantage of the Firefox browser was that it was smaller, faster, and more secure than IE (because it didn't include things like ActiveX)?
What happened?
And the worms ate into his brain.
The biggest problem I had with Firefox was that it would take more and more memory as you opened more pages, and despite trying a few things there seemed to be no limit to how much memory it would take. And it didn't release the memory until you actually closed the program and opened it again. So you could open 12 pages, close all but 1 and it'd still be using the memory equivalent to those eleven closed pages.
They can still get XP.
The logic you weave assumes that somebody is sitting there with a non-functional bunch of hardware with no OS, and now has to go shopping for it.
The truth is, if you went out to build a PC using new components today, it would be able to run Vista. If your PC is a year old, it may run Vista or not - but it already runs XP and you really have no reason to upgrade it.
And frankly, the recommended home system has some pretty low specs by modern standards:
That's copy pasted from MS's official page. A lot is made of the "need for a new video card".. DX9 with 32 megs memory? Whatever.
So who is this market with people with 5 year old PCs, and no use for them, who need to go get an OS? It doesn't exist.
People would want to see all of Vista's razzle-dazzle in linux, before they'd order the linux machine from Dell.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"Acid2 is NOT a standard. Acid is a really poorly written page with many issues or features developers want including error checking in CSS."
The page is MEANT to be 'poorly' written and full of errors. It is meant to check the browsers error handling. Saying Acid2 isn't important is like saying checking for invalid input in your code and failing gracefully isn't important. Also if you prefer standards compliance over 'supporting the junk', you should go with Konqueror, Safari, or Opera (or any of the other KHTML/WebKit based browsers). Gecko only seems standards compliant when you compare it against Trident (Internet Explorer), but when you compare it against the other browsers it is rather depressing.
Really, Firefox should drop Preferences (which doesn't have any of the really useful stuff, and is hard to find things in anyway), and just make about:config nicer. Preferences has a bunch of stuff sorted into non-orthogonal categories that are often vague ("main", "content", "advanced") or inappropriate (the choice of font is clearly a matter of presentation, but it's under "content").
The configuration engine should be extended to keep track of what the options are for things with options (and, in general, the effective types of settings, like "font" instead of "string"), what the description is, and keywords you might be searching for. Then ditch the "status" column (the same info is given by boldness) and the type (you only care when changing it), show the descriptive text instead of the name, and handle the configuration stuff that's not in about:config similarly (e.g., handlers for various types), and have type-specific widgets. And have the window blank if the search field is empty and "Show All" isn't clicked.
Noone claims that Linux has obscene hardware requirements on the basis that you'd need a decent cpu/ram/gpu to run XGL/Compriz/Beryl or whatever, why should Aero be any different
Ah, but that's the hilarious, beautiful thing about it.
I'm running Beryl on my 5 year-old laptop . Celeron 1.5 Ghz. Built-in video (Intel 810). 384 megs of RAM. This is some old, anemic friggin' hardware.
And yet, it flies. Everything runs as quickly as it should. The 3D bells and whistles don't slow the machine down a single cycle. Now, can you please explain to me how I can somehow get all the cool eye candy of Vista (and then some) on a system with one-quarter the spec of the recommended system architecture? Is Microsoft's coding really that bad?