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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.'
1. Let me stop the damn animated gifs and flash things with the "stop" button like the old Netscape let me.
2. Smaller memory footprint.
3. Let me stop sounds/music with the stop button.
Otherwise I like the product.
The latest build that I got of Firefox 3 did pass ACID2. Another step forward for standards. Now if we can drag IE there.
Oh and first post.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
The biggest performance hit in Firefox seems to be to do with the fact that the UI is multithreaded (as is the JS engine). Is there any chance this is going to be addressed in Firefox 3? Using a single-threaded browser in a multicore environment is painful, especially when working with many tabs at a time.
Screenshots available here.
"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"
Despite the alleged lightness and nimbleness of web apps, they're still slower and more unreliable than native apps, when they work at all.
DOM storage? Great, *yet* another way in which websites can store data. I haven't even managed to educate people like my parents about why they shouldn't automatically accept cookies from every server forever - and don't get me started on Flash and its ability to store data on your computer without you even noticing (a "feature" that's enabled by default, one might add, and that can't even (easily) be disabled without going to Adobe's website).
Now, don't get me wrong, there certainly are legitimate reasons to store data on people's computers, but I really want to have some control over who can store information on mine - I want to be able to allow/disallow it, I want to be able to say "notify me whenever it happens", and, most importantly, I want a sensible default where at the *very* least, you get notifications that data is being stored.
butter the donkey
The screenshots aren't pink and don't mention ponies. How am I supposed to use it on Saturday if there aren't any ponies?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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!!!!
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5373 colin 15 0 246m 71m 23m S 18.9 16.3 14:08.68 firefox-bin
Seems pretty big to me. Konqueror is a fraction of that size.
Deleted
"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."
Firefox, light and nimble?
Jebus, the memory footprint on that thing is far, far beyond ridiculous at this point, not to mention noticibly larger than even IE7's memory requirements.
And even ignoring that, you're comparing Firefox to Vista. I should bloody well hope it's light and nimble in comparison, unless, of course Firefox 3 aims to be a whole operating system.
Furthermore, Vista actually has fairly reasonable hardware requirements if you turn off all of that fancy GUI stuff. People forget that not only can all those flashy things be turned off, but you can painlessly swap out the explorer shell in and of itself. The comparison is outright stupid. 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, you don't have to use it. The only difference is that Aero is included in the default install.
I understand that this is slashdot, and we never pass up a chanceto take a shot at Microsoft or Vista. But seriously, this has gotten to the point of sheer stupidity, and hipocracy: Id someone were to make a completely uneducated, false claim about Linux, it'd be followed up by a few dozen posts crying bloody murder, yet, now, because its ashot at Vista, its suddely okay to make completely asinine claims that in no way at all intersect with reality at any point whatsoever?
No wonder there's all this talk about Linux's superiority, and Firefox's superiority, and [random OSS app here]'s superiority, people have absolutely no clue about the competition. At least have a basic grasp on the competing broducts before making these comparisons. Know thine enemy and all.
I could swear Sun Tzu turns a full rotation with every other post here.
Yeah, yeah, -1 flamebait, whatever.
It's PC Magazine. Fact checking, anyone?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'd much rather see Thunderbird 2.0 get released. I thought Mozilla was going to try and have the development of the two projects a little more in sync than this.
Whoever decided it was a good idea to add animated PNG support to the core instead of making it a plugin is clearly smoking crack.
The only way you can get Seamonkey saved is by using it. Adding it to this list won't help.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
Even if we consider the poster a credible source...
The parent post gives numbers without context of any kind. We do not know what version of Firefox is being used. We do not know how many and which extensions are being used. We do not know how many concurrent windows and/or tabs are in use. We do not know what URLs or files Firefox has been asked to open. Without this information, we cannot reach any actual conclusions, as these could be perfectly reasonable values for any browser, depending on the tasks the browser was asked to accomplish.
Too much in the browser, again. It's a browser. Not a "platform". We went through this already, with Mozilla, which had to be chopped down to provide a browser of manageable size. The Firefox crowd is repeating the mistakes of Mozilla and Internet Exploder. We don't need this.
In Firefox 2, there's already too much bloat. Saving images of pages hogs memory, and didn't visibly improve performance.
The project seems to have been captured by the "browser as a platform" people again. Nobody cares about XUL, people. All users want is a browser.
In a few years, all web pages will have to work on the minimal browser comes with the OLPC machine. The OLPC is going to force computing to go on a much-needed weight reduction program.
Stop the Fucking trolling, firefox does not ever use more than 100 MB, you may wish to friging update yourself
Also whatever bad thing you have to say about firefox consider:
Just a concern.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
What exactly are you saving that RAM for? True love?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Firefox, or Eclipse?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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?