Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 3 RC1 Out Now
Jay writes "Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now. If yours didn't auto-update, then get it while it's hot! The release came a bit early, with Computer World noting: 'As recently as last Saturday, Mozilla's chief engineer said that although the company had locked down RC1's code, it was planning to publicly launch the build in "late May."'" My copy just downloaded — restarting after I save this story. God I hope it's better than the last beta.
"So simple a grandmother can use it"
This is offensive. I am a grandmother, and a C programmer.
I've never had firefox 3 crash on Linux with my beta 5. Nor FF2 for that matter, I'm not sure what you're talking about. My friend's had some instability problems with a 64bit processor and flash, is that it?
What was wrong with Beta 5?
Seems to work flawlessly here on my Eee PC 701. I never installed XP on my Eee so I can't compare it to that, only to the FF I have installed on my desktop, and the stability is the same - no complaints, no crashes so far.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Yeah i dont get the comment in the summary Firefox3 beta 5 has been quite stable for most people, it still crashes with flash though (in fact last night using flash 10 it took out my xorg) but when not using flash i've not had any problems. I've been using it consistently since beta 3 because its been so much more stable than firefox 2
If people have been having people's they really should be filling bug reports, there's no way its going to magically improve without being told what's wrong
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The only changes I've noticed so far are visual, such as extra gradients in certain areas, color changes in the AwesomeBar, and etc (running in Vista btw). There's probably technical improvements elsewhere but I couldn't find a reference anywhere for what they might be.
Some changes are summarised here: http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/05/firefox-3-release-candidate-1-is-here/ . A new version of Cairo (1.6) is used under the hood.
I haven't had too many problems with crashes, but I still don't run firefox on linux. The biggest issue I've had with it is a tendency for tabs to just take a VERY long time to load.
The behavior I've seen is this:
1. Go to a site with lots of links - such as a news site or RSS aggregator.
2. Start middle-clicking on links to open them in tabs.
Inevitably one of the early ones just doesn't load - it sits and looks like it is loading and does nothing for a minute or two. All subsequent tabs do the same thing. As soon as the first one actually does load and render the others instantly load and rendor. Obviously something is blocking the loading/rendering in all open tabs when this is happening.
Everything works just fine in konqueror, so that is what I tend to use all the time. I'd actually prefer firefox for its plugins/etc, but it just isn't reliable for me. Now the only time I use it on linux is when a page doesn't render correctly in konqueror.
I'd also like to comment that I'm very concerned with the keep-piling-on-features mentality in Firefox. I want a web browser - not an OS/desktop-in-a-window. The whole reason that firefox was born was that everybody was tired of Mozilla having 47 huge features that nobody needed. Let's stick to the basics and do them right. If they want to come out with a few other apps that can tightly integrate with firefox, that's great - but let's let the stand-alone browser be a stand-alone browser...
For the last year, I have consistently seen on the Windows version an annoying bug. If one tab takes forever to load, any other tab will not load a new page either. I find Ebay is one of the worst to bring it out. If you switch to using IE in a tab, that tab will show about:blank.
I can understand some websites may make a Firefox tab crap out but it shouldn't affect the rest.
The issue I've seen with Flash isn't a crash, but that if one lingers on a page with a lot of Flash content (say, Youtube) and leaves the page up while browsing in other tabs, CPU eventually spikes to 99% usage, requiring the browser to be shut down.
Unfortunately, this isn't a Firefox problem, but a problem with the Flash plugin. The workaround I found (thanks to other Slashdot users) was to install the addon Flashblock. Now, instead of having the Flash content sitting and waiting, it's replaced by a little clickable object to load it. Since installing it, I have not experienced the CPU spike behavior, when it used to be a daily issue. Hope this helps folks.
RW
I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser. Now, I'm not RMS and I do use some proprietary software, for example Flash is installed on all my Linux boxes and I have a few proprietary games I play via WINE and some non-free Linux software such as Google Earth too. But when you think of all the information you enter on a web browser (credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc.) I just can't bring myself to use a non-free browser. It also doesn't help that Opera used to be Adware and that also makes me hesitant to use Opera as a full time browser. I don't hate Opera (in fact I use it on non-personal sites on the Wii all the time) but I just don't trust a proprietary browser when there are several good free alternatives around (Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Etc.). If Opera ever comes out with a free version of their browser (As in open-source free) I will be one of the first to download it, but until then Opera is mostly restricted to browser-testing and the Wii.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge
I believe only the binary versions are under the EULA, which AFAIK has been there since FF1. The source versions (which the distros compile from) is and has been under the MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I am sorry for offtopic post, but Firefox was a bit of regression for me. The new page info doesn't contain outgoing links. I haven't used it much in fact, but few days ago I needed to paste few links into wget and found that out.
;-) I installed the web developer toolbar in the end, but it's not very nice to copy it from there and it comes with a lot of other stuff I don't really need.
Yes, I know they are planning an extension for that, but I wanted to use it now (I have Ubuntu) and I would like to note - try to find extension using google which will list links on page.
Why is there such movement in OSS lately that thinks that removal of features will be an improvement for users? It's strikingly similar to Wikipedia's deletionist movement. Organization of features/information, not removal, is the key.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I've been running this build now for 4 days straight going to countless sites that use every which plugins for movies and flash and javascript and so far considering it hasn't crashed on me in windows I'd say it's pretty solid.
:)
Although I am running a Q6600 with 4GB. But Beta 5 used to crash on me every 2 hours.
Now to business,
Firebug Official for FF3 Please
No?
Not interested. Were you interested in a reply or not?
Try this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.richResults
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"You imply people should accept using buggy software."
..a clearly labeled beta that you have to go through some hoops to deliberately download? Yeah, you should accept a few bugs. And also report them, so they won't be there in the final release.
Well
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Plus, it wasn't directed at your god anyway, it was meant for the God of Opensource.
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
That setting was disabled long ago. Try again.
Go to "about:config"
Change "browser.urlbar.maxRichResults" to 0
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
Thanks to Firefox 3 betas I've managed *finally* to convert my wife to use FF. Only if I could get her using something other than Microsoft Live Messenger or get Messenger working with Wine I could get rid of our last WinXP installation.
FF3b5 has a strange JavaScript issue where if you go to a page that runs some kind of combination of JavaScript the entire browser, all running windows of it, will close, no warning and no recovery when you start it again. I saw it happen on a few pages but mostly with gmail. Trying to reply in gmail was almost a certain way to trigger it.
Hmm, on the page you linked I read:
* Mozilla Firefox (nightly builds from 2007-11-29 to 2007-12-17)
Eventually it's better to look here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227
If Firefox "takes out" Xorg, that implies a bug in Xorg, not necessarily one in Firefox. In fact, the Xorg bug could conceivably be a security issue, so that's more severe.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Never happened and I've run the latest version since FF2. I bet there is some other factor making it touch, otherwise it would be more of a storm about it because it is not that acceptable.
1. You may not unbrand an official build of Firefox.
2. Using Firefox does not give you the right to use Mozilla trademarks. However, since they are legally available elsewhere, and Mozilla does not sue anybody for non-slanderous uses of the logos, this is boilerplate.
3. Any proprietary stuff that may be contained in FF is off-limits.
If I understand correctly, this was the Windows build made by Mozilla. Linux builds are made by the distros, so they would only need to comply with the source code licences.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
"You imply people should accept using buggy software."
I didn't read that way. I'd say he implies that people should accept beta software is buggy and that using beta software and filling bugs against it it's the best way for such a software to become as buggy-free as possible when launched as stable.
"Why should I use something that causes aggravation with the most simple task? I think it's ridiculous that canonical should have used such a cheesy piece of crap for a browser in the first place"
That's quite a different assumption from the grandparent's poster and I have to say I do agree with both of them: specially when talking about open source software, betatesting and filling bugs is the best way to improve software quality for a non-developer but it's ridiculous and misleading shipping a quoted-to-be stable and "production-ready" OS release full of beta-quality software. Still, too many Linux distributions follow the featuritis trend instead of following strong engineering advices. Just as an example, I feel OK for Fedora to be released with beta-quality software (Fedora is aimed to be a "technology-preview" and enthusiast testing field) while I don't feel the same to be OK for Ubuntu which is told to be a production-ready, non-technical user-friendly one.
But then, I think Linux distributions not to be so different to any other "market" products: it is the consumer responsibility (within legal requirements) to practice their own "due-diligence" and see how good the *product*, not the marketroid speech, stands against their requirements.
I had a similar issue, but with digg. NoScript stopped it crashing so I could at least read comments.
May I know why you don't like it? I love it and find it hard to live without it now. For example, I go to IMDb.com all the time. If I want to go back to a movie that I've previously visited without searching for it on Google or IMDb, I can do it by typing in a partial title to the address bar. It's a little faster and also doesn't query the network.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Comment removed based on user account deletion
More like "paranoid".
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
By hoops, I take it you mean "install the default web browser from the Ubuntu 8.04 CD". Granted, it's about as stable as everything else in the distribution.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
I'm not sure exactly what was wrong... something was corrupted for sure but a variety of javascript was simply not being processed. Flash wasn't loading, possibly due to lack of javascript as so many flash embeds are done that way now....
In any case if you have any problems on OSX you might want to try moving all your prefs and addons/extensions/etc anything mozilla or firefox and starting up FF3 RC1 as a brand new install.
I only use FF to test websites (love safari) and occasionally to do some rigorous script debugging with firebug. So I don't have any bookmarks or other settings I care about. You may want to find out how to save those things for re-import later if you use it daily.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I'm surprised at the number of people with stability problems. I tried 3.0a1 and I had instant crashes in AJAX web apps, so I decided to wait until b1 which turned out to be a good decision, because it was much more stable. Each beta has been increasingly better. I still get a couple crashes here and there but I am betting it's due to Flash or an add-on I'm using.
On Linux I use Swiftfox, which is a recompiled Firefox optimized for individual processors so it can be even a little faster than Firefox 3. Only problem is they occasionally push out a nightly build over their update package source thingy (I tend to prefer the public beta releases) but nothing that has been unstable yet.
If you're having stability problems, you really have no right to complain until you at least TRY to fix it since Firefox gives you the tools to do so. To use another car analogy, it's like complaining your car doesn't slow down fast enough so you need a different one but you haven't even tried using the brakes yet. Well not exactly but I needed to use a car analogy. Anyways here's some things you should try:
If you still have problems it's likely a problem with Firefox, in which case I suppose you could complain, but it would be more productive to file a bug report to increase the chances of it being fixed. To quote GLaDOS, "Thank you for helping us help you help us all."
Especially as passing the ACID test for the sake of it will not actually improve the user experience.
ACID 3 passes should come naturally, there shouldn't be the webkit style rush to pass because its only improved the browser as a side-effect instead of passing the test as a side-effect.Its like learning the answer's to a test instead of actually learning the material, sure you'll pass the test but when you go out to do some real world work/browsing, it wont of helped.
This all combined with the fact that ACID doesn't test standards compliance, as a firefox user I'm glad they're not wasting their time on it.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I've only been using FF3 on Ubuntu 8.04, and it has been terrible on both of the machines I've used it on. Basically it has long and short hangs and random crashes. Well, not completely random, actually. Some of the problems are pretty clear related to JavaScript, and /. and Gmail are two of the most affected. I have a number of other machines to upgrade, but not yet, please.
I really feel that the Ubuntu people are losing it, and the failure of their project will be a major black eye for Linux. It's a good idea, but they are screwing it up by not figuring out how to manage their initial success. One example is relying on mirrors rather than BitTorrent as the default download. Some of the mirrors must be okay--but I sure have heck finding them. Certainly not the mirrors selected by their testing procedures for the best mirror.
Overall, I'd guess that their problem is that they are trying to be too aggressive about supporting new features for too many platforms. It's not like Apple's situation, where they can control the number of supported configurations. In theory, you'd suppose that Ubuntu could offset it by better testing, but in practice, their testing is evidently quite slipshod--and the result seems to be that each new release is worse than the previous one, though it has a few new bells and whistles. In conclusion, I can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a beginner's distro, and I'm thinking about switching to something else... My own employer is basically a RHEL shop, though I've never liked it much.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
After like 10 years I'm still reading the "works on my machine" posts with no mention of the machine type.
;)
I call them the "Well, its raining HERE" comments.
You need to identify the (OS::distro) and plugins in use for these "Release [ ] suxx0rs!!!" posts to have any meaning.
I generally find that if that question is answered, it's some guy running the L33tware distro in 24MB of RAM on a Transmeta Crusoe who is enraged that his opensource software crashes, and no, he hasn't logged a bug because God told him that it is destiny to always have bugless software AND will be Lord of Faerun in time.
(No offense to parent
Your comment leads me to believe you've never done any significant software development work. Consider that the Acid3 test was released at the tail end of the Gecko development cycle. This puts Mozilla in a bad position, because they were already at feature freeze and didn't want to further delay the final release. So, shooting for Acid3 compliance at this point would be the height of stupidity.
The Acid3 test is also a bit controversial in its own right. Acid1 and Acid2 addressed broad compatibility with several core web standards, without regard for any particular browser. In contrast, Acid3 covers an odd mix of quirks chosen to intentionally highlight bugs in different browsers. Acid3 also includes a random mix of features from things like SMIL and SVG, which are enormously complex standards not supported in their entirety by any major browser. That also means that Acid3 can be gamed by simply implementing just enough of a feature to pass the test, but not enough to be genuinely useful in practice.
Simply put, Acid3 is a much less useful test than the previous versions. I have no doubt that Mozilla will eventually pass, but they won't delay the Firefox 3.0 release and have made it clear that they won't play the partial implementation game to beat the test.
Could you please link to the bug you filed?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Give me a break. I'm well and truly tired of hearing this empty argument. Is FOSS guaranteed to be bug- and exploit-free? Hardly. Does the fact that millions of people can look at it make a difference, even if only a few do? Absolutely. Tell ya what. I'll pick up a list of five hundred closed-source programs with malware. If you can get me a list of ten open-source programs with malware, I'll concede.
I'll be waiting over there. Asleep.
That is certainly not Mozilla's fault.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Were there other problems? Because apart from the above, I used the last beta every day on Ubuntu, MS Windows, and OS X and had no problems. It is the Phishing protection database. After you erase that file, disable Phishing protection. If you feel confident enough in yourself to identify phishing sites yourself, that is. I leave it enabled for the mother in law.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The open source idea is great but open source is not the be all end all. It just isn't. There are too many industry specific applications that are so highly tailored to particular industry and there is simply no open source alternative. I work in the construction software industry. There are several job cost accounting, project management, estimating and document imaging packages made by several vendors that are specifically tailored to this industry. I highly doubt there will ever be open source alternatives to these kinds of pieces of software that can all integrate together as seamlessly as the propriety alternatives. Forget integrating together, I doubt we will ever see open source alternatives for any of these in the first place. Writing that kind of software can be tedious and you have to understand the specifics of the industry and the kinds of business processes that small, medium and large companies have and you have to understand the different kinds of contractors that are out there (general contractors, electrical contractors, heavy highway, etc) and their various requirements.
I just don't see an incentive for a bunch of developers to get together who have that kind of very industry specific understanding to write these big, complex pieces of software just for the fun of it. I love my job because the work environment is great and so is the money but if I were given a choice of writing any piece of software I wouldn't choose writing stuff for this industry. It's not that I don't like it, it just wouldn't be my first or second choice if I could do anything and get paid just as well as I'm paid doing this and have the kind of job security that I have.
I get enjoyment from my work, but the real enjoyment comes when we close a huge deal and I cash a huge check.
I had this problem too. I think I fixed it by uninstalling Firebug. There are several versions of firebug (official and otherwise) that claim to run with ff3, but i don't think any do.
Don't know who the hell modded you as troll, but if anyone reads this please note that parent was most likely being deadly serious, in fact up until 3.0-beta4 I always used Opera over Firefox on Linux.
To GP, in my experience Firefox3 is much more stable than FF2 on Linux, I'm using Kubuntu 8.l04 KDE4 edition.
A lot more people read open source than closed. Maybe only 200+ people outside of the Mozilla project have read Firefox, but how many external developers have read IE7? 0?
I can't see how you don't understand that all else being equal, an open source program is going to be more screened for this stuff.
As for trusting it, well, I'd rather trust the thing I could verify, even if all I had time to check was random subsets of it, than the thing I couldn't...
Of course, high end commercial packages will be here for a while.
What the OSS movement has done well is to provide alternatives to commodity software so that the ancillaries don't smoke your budget. OSS can also provide add-ons that the mainline vendor has not built into their official package releases.
Applying what I have learned through this site, I have completely replaced IE as a browser, and because MS-Office 7 is so silly, *almost* replaced that with Open Office (the 3.0 betas are out, and can handle the new extensions.)
Now when we buy software, at least I can be satisfied when it's spent on first-tier applications rather than the result of a 25-year old weasel deal in Seattle.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I had a similar problem. The solution was to right click on any flash applet, and "disable hardware acceleration"
I don't know what the deal is with people on /. having Firefox issues. I've never seen Firefox issues on any of our Linux boxes. Our hardware is very diverse too. 64/32 bit from old i585 boxes to multicore intel and amd boxes. Most machines are running Debian. About an equal number are using Ubuntu and CentOS. None of these include sales or marketing but I find it hard to believe the complaints on /. are because users are not technical. I don't think anyone is using KDE though. Maybe that is the connection.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I think about "Trust Grids". It's about who has what agenda.
On one corner, I was late to understand, but I watched enough of MS's tricks unfold live to absolutely distrust everything they do.
My verdict is out on Apple.
Some of the famous OSS icons have their special situations, but I feel that their mistakes are somewhat easier to both see through and counteract afterward.
Because I have no programming skill at all, I have to trust someone; I currently trust the independent coders as a cohesive whole to produce purer code because that's in their best interests long term.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I, for one, welcome my C-Coding grandmotherly overlords.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Odd, I've never entered my 'social security number' (or Canadian equivalent, my SIN) or a credit card into a web browser. If I need to buy something online, I get one of those pre-paid credit cards from wherever and use those.
Regardless, you send all of your information over the network - even your e-mail address! - despite not being able to see the code on the other end?
Fact of the matter is, you should trust Opera more than any web site. Breaking into a poorly-maintained server (or even a well-maintained server with a 0-day exploit) is often not as hard as you'd think. Once you're in, it's a trivial matter to dump the database, or even just modify the code to redirect information.
Do you really know who's behind every website you visit? Not 100%, not all the time. But you know who's behind Opera, and you can track where it tries to connect and how. That's more reassuring than anything.
Any 'closed-source is the boogeyman' individuals should honestly stop and think about things like the recent exploit in the Thai (?) language pack for Firefox, or the huge SSL bug that Debian developer introduced way back when. Just because many eyes *can* look at it doesn't mean they will.
I'd opine that it is more important; promoting "alternative" software to the management types requires a tricky blend of eye-candy and stability. Most of my discussions went easier when you can say "This software does _____"
I'm seeing a lot of remarks about flash, and if a particular important reference site you you just happens to have that magic combination of elements to take you down, it's a tough initial impression to erase.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Two of my favorite / most-used extensions are DownloadHelpder and TabsOpenRelative.
Both of them are broken in this new RC. I installed it (before knowing that), and at least it was kind enough to say after the update was complete that a) these extensions don't work and b) that the program would seek updates periodically to find if a new version *does* work.
Would have been a lot handier to know that up-front though; I wouldn't have done the upgrade, actually, if I'd known that.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In my experience 90% of 'firefox' issues on linux are actually Flash issues.
Flashblock and noscript sorts most of that out and makes the internet usable again to boot.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Also, correct error handling is part of being standard compliant.
Er, what? Opera provides binaries for x86, x86_64 (in the most recent beta build only), PowerPC and SPARC, and all of the above come in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. You can explore the relevant parts of their FTP site for yourself if you want to check.
OMG, the new version of Firefox identifies Mozilla.org as a malicious site!
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ff3_malwarereal.png
100% ack. The "more eyeballs - bugs shallow" idea turns out to be little more than an elusive Idealtyp if you look at the openssl Debian desaster. Replacing all the certificates that are floating around and calming down eventually is gonna cost tons of money. I don't know about the US, but here in Germany Debian is huge and the number one choice for servers.
It's a little like with airbags or fastened seat belts. They tend to work. But if you drive more recklessly as a result the net effect is zero if not negative.
Mind you, I reckon the more people switch to Linux the fewer will bother to even check the checksums of the files they download and install. Let alone look into the source code of their Firefox.
I agree.
Here's a good example of how useless ACID3 is:
http://blog.codedread.com/archives/2008/03/26/webkit-nightly-not-smiling/
Webkit gets 100/100 on ACID3, which includes SVG tests, yet webkit only gets 5/116 on SVG animation compliance.
Implementing the bare minimum to pass acid3 is a disservice to everyone.
Eric Meyer also has a bunch to say on how acid3 is a "missed opportunity"
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/03/27/acid-redux/
That's your opinion. A perfectly valid one.
In my case I prefer to use some software that has been working perfectly fine for years and has been extensively copied in almost all features by others.
And by copied, I don't mean perfect copies. Mouse gestures in FF still sucks after you have used Opera mouse gestures for more than a week. And middle-button scrolling. All others have middle-button scrolling, but I just can't have pixel perfect accuracy with FF as I can with Opera. You see, you talk about hypothetic stuff (but valid, nonetheless) and I talk about actual experience (because all else is not really equal).
Having said that, I expect that FF copies Opera excellent SVG support as soon as possible.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
AFAIK FF3 will have the best memory management of any browser.
I would be using this RC1 if I were you.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
I'd also like to comment that I'm very concerned with the keep-piling-on-features mentality in Firefox. I want a web browser - not an OS/desktop-in-a-window. The whole reason that firefox was born was that everybody was tired of Mozilla having 47 huge features that nobody needed. Let's stick to the basics and do them right. If they want to come out with a few other apps that can tightly integrate with firefox, that's great - but let's let the stand-alone browser be a stand-alone browser...
I'm surprised to hear this. I had the impression that Firefox 3 was much heavier on improvements (speed, memory, security, stability, OS integration) and lighter on new features than any other recent version, despite the long development cycle.
Even the 40 or so "new features" I listed in my unofficial changelog are mostly replacements for, or subtle enhancements to, existing features. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of speed and memory improvements and over 16000 total bug fixes.
Are there any new features that you think are especially "bloaty" or damaging to the user experience, or any aspects of quality that you feel have been neglected?
The shareholder is always right.
The add-on manager to FF3 actually allows you to enable and disable plugins on the fly, without a restart (I think it even does it immediately, without having to reload the page)-- it's a little less direct, but does act as a good alternative to 3rd-party "block" extensions.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Afaict ubuntu is trying to do a LTS release on a relatively (compared to redhat/novell) small budget by avoiding having to backport security fixes themselves. I understand why they are doing this (they want to break into the enterprise market becaue that is where the real money is) but I wonder if it will backfire on them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You're right, but some feel that web browsing is not an "industry specific application that is highly tailored to a particular industry with no open source alternative."
Perhaps, then, your post would have been better placed somewhere else, and not as a response to "I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser..."
Somehow I think we can troll each other on the internets without name calling.