Firefox 3 Hits Release Candidate 2

Barence noted that Firefox has announced release candidate 2 of their highly popular web browser. You can read the release notes while you download. And since my copy just finished downloading, I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any

Comments

Read this

[qrwe]

..with RC2 already. To late..

Re:Read this

[Xanius]

"One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to."

And when you do that for the Mozilla page, "this website does not supply identification information", which proves that this feature is a complete waste of programming time. If the website doesn't supply the information then there's nothing to verify to make yourself more secure.

Re:Read this

[initdeep]

S'okay.
Doesn't work for /. either.....

prolly works for Internet Explorer Homepage tho.... :D

Re:Read this

[Darlo888]

And when you do that for the Mozilla page, "this website does not supply identification information", which proves that this feature is a complete waste of programming time. If the website doesn't supply the information then there's nothing to verify to make yourself more secure. That's because it only works for encrypted connections.

Actual Release Notes

[MankyD]

Anyone have the actual RC2 release notes instead of just the Ffx3 general release notes?

Re:Actual Release Notes

[protobion]

scroll up on the link, boy.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 Release Notes

I found it linked to on the Firefox 3 download page.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Argh. DISREGARD, that's the same bloody page that's in the article.

Well, it's a release candidate anyway so there's not going to be any new features. It'll be critical bugfixes only, which is probably why there's no dedicated release notes, they'll arrive for the final version. I'm guessing you could search Bugzilla to find recent fixes of critical or blocker bugs, but it's running pretty slowly now and I wouldn't know how to make such a search, so I'm leaving now.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2008-05-27

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Victor Antolini]

You can always check out http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/ It's not quite up to date right now but it's great for keeping track of development. He maintains this list which may be helpful: http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Cuga]

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2008-05-27

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Rysc]

Remember the good-old days when Mozilla (and Firefox) release notes actually talked about bugs fixed, features introduced, and interesting things? When each version actually informed you about what had changed?

Ever since Mozilla went corporate things have gone down hill. Going to mozilla.org (or .com) and trying to find betas is now impossible. No, really... there are no links to non-release versions.

I miss the time when Mozilla was a user-friendly organization, when everything was public and *easy to find*.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Sure, but I'd like to know what those bugfixes are - the firefox release notes page hasn't changed significantly (that I've seen) since Beta 1. Kind of frustrating when you want to see what's actually in the release, and not a sales pitch.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[somersault]

I thought the entire purpose of Betas was for limited release testing, not so that people could still download them once the release candidates or final versions were out?

Re:Actual Release Notes

[drinkypoo]

traditionally it went something like this: alphas were for internal testing only, betas went out to some customers, release candidates went out to those customers and maybe some more, and then you had a general release. Now all of these terms could mean basically anything, but release candidate still means "something we want users to test for us, and are willing to hear complaints about."

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still the same as always (except some shoddy companies):
alpha - it's a mess, we know there are serious bugs, but at least it compiles
beta - it works, but there are some known bugs and probably more unknown ones, tell us what you think
rc - it working well, feature complete, very few bugs, please help find the remaining bugs
release - we think this is solid, it's safe to use

Re:Actual Release Notes

[GarfBond]

User-friendly means not inundating the AOL/myspace crowd with bugzilla links and technical jargon. User-friendly means presenting those users with the officially supported release versions instead of the developer targeted nightlies, alphas, betas, or RCs.

I don't think your perception of user-friendly means what you think it does. Perhaps what you're looking for is "developer-friendly" or "obsessive geek friendly," in which case you might be better off going to http://developer.mozilla.org

Re:Actual Release Notes

[BPPG]

developers and obsessive geeks are users too, they just happen to use the software differently... user-friendly is such a broad term these days, there's no sense in arguing over it.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Rysc]

Betas are for testing, great! How can I test what I can't find? I get it that on Mozilla.com you want the prominent link to be to the release version, I get that maybe *on mozilla.com* you want no beta links at all. But if I go to mozilla.org I am not one of the unwashed masses who just wants a browser, at .org I am a community member wanting to help test.

When I bought a laptop recently and went looking for the latest Firefox--because I always run the latest Mozilla code, because I'm a geek and its cool and sometimes I can help fix bugs--I went to mozilla.org and... got stuck. No beta5 link anywhere! I eventually resorted to googling to find the news posts about the latest beta release.

How does releasing a beta or an RC help if it's so hidden your testers can't find it?

Re:Actual Release Notes

[klui]

There was a post at http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=556146&cid=23445228 which referenced the RC1 changes but that hasn't been updated for RC2. But you can edit the link for trunk checkins' dates to see what has been committed after May 12.

My question is more along the lines of is it worth it to install RC2. The portable version of RC1 has been quite stable.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[TravisO]

You guys need to read the f'ing link you paste, those release notes are general FF3 notes, not RC1->RC2 items.

Perhaps if you read his question you'd know that's wasn't what he asked.

PS: Normally you can get such info from the developer forum but I don't see it
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=23

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to actually follow the daily builds or help with the bugs coming out, you should check out http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=23 I've been using daily trunk builds since 2005 and I've never looked back:P

Re:Actual Release Notes

[el americano]

Beta should be feature complete. RC should be solid. In fact, in most cases RC will be the release when a serious bug is not found.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[dvice_null]

As in open source software anyone can usually get the latest snapshot of the application, I think the following describes better the different stages:

alpha - Doesn't have all the features the final version is expected to have.
beta - Feature complite but has bugs which must be fixed before release version.
release candidate - If nothing serious is found, this will be the same as final release

Re:Actual Release Notes

[jasampler]

There're no differences in "What's New" between the release notes for 3.0rc1 and those for 3.0rc2, but I found differences in the "Known Issues" section between these two versions:

New issues for All systems:

• The IME input tool used to enter Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters covers the "Add Bookmark" panel. Users can use IME for input in the Library window by selecting "Organize Bookmarks..." from the Bookmarks menu (bug 433340)
• Some users who have customized toolbars may need to reset them if they are missing the Back and Forward buttons (bug 426026)
• Some Web pages (such as mlb.com) do not properly detect if Silverlight is installed and will not function properly (bug 432371)

New issues for Mac OS X:

• Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters can not be entered (using IME) into text fields in Flash objects (bug 357670)
• If you are using IPv6 from a network location that doesn't support IPv6 routing your DNS lookups may be very slow. Set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true as a workaround (bug 417689)

New issues for Linux and Unix:

• Users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) may find that Firefox always starts in "Offline" mode. Toggle File > Work Offline as a work around (bug 424626)

Issues removed for Linux and Unix:

• If your screen resolution is 800x600 or smaller, you may not be able to see the "Accept" button on the End User License Agreement. Keyboard commands can be used to accept the agreement (bug 433298)
• Ubuntu users who download and install Firefox may find that they cannot install add-ons without first deleting their extensions.rdf file (bug 433371)

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

offtopic, but rabbits don't have jobs.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[ArsonSmith]

They want good users to test as to filter out the bugs.

They filter out the good users by making it non-obvious to find the RC.

If you can't find the RC then you probably aren't going to be very useful.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be:
Nightlies compile but don't necessarily work in a useful way, even just for general testing.
Alphas are working but not complete and have known show-stopper bugs.
Betas are working and feature complete, but have known bugs which are not acceptable in a release product.
Release candidates are working, feature complete and have no known show-stopper bugs. If none are found in further testing, the release candidate turns into a release: A tried and tested release candidate.

These days the distinction is coupled to the development and testing processes rather than the result of these processes:
Nightlies are rapidly changing with new feature additions and major changes. Testing mostly by developers.
Alphas are still changing a lot and features are still added, but testing is officially expanded to dedicated testers and/or adventurous users.
Betas are the result of closing the door to major changes. Only corrections and minor feature additions are allowed. Testing expands to include the target audience.
Release candidates are mostly done. Normal users are encouraged to test the release candidate to find remaining interoperability bugs "in the wild". Depending on the severity of these bugs, they are documented and the candidate turns into a release or the bugs are fixed and another candidate is produced.

The main difference is that now release candidates are not expected to be release-worthy from the get-go. There is also another nomenclature in which "beta" means "this is our final product, but because we rushed it and couldn't wait to start cashing in, we have to cover our asses and slap the beta tag on it. If that makes you feel special, because you are one of the first few hundred thousand people who get to test our software, even better for us."

Re:Actual Release Notes

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That couldn't possibly be the reason I chose that particular quote as my signature, could it?

Re:Actual Release Notes

[dbug78]

Going to mozilla.org (or .com) and trying to find betas is now impossible. No, really... there are no links to non-release versions. There's a link to "Firefox 3 Sneak Peak" right on the mozilla.org front page. If that weren't there, the latest beta or RC is still available from the Developers link up top.

Doesn't seem so difficult to me.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Minwee]

Sadly, those days are as gone as the days when you could freely check out the source code from CVS, check the status of up-to-the-minute builds and build the complete application on your own.

Which is to say they're not gone at all.

Re:Actual Release Notes

[yoyhed]

Remember the good-old days when Mozilla (and Firefox) release notes actually talked about bugs fixed, features introduced, and interesting things? When each version actually informed you about what had changed?

Going to mozilla.org (or .com) and trying to find betas is now impossible. No, really... there are no links to non-release versions.

Except for the big ol' link under "What's New" on mozilla.com, called Firefox 3 Sneak Peek, which leads to the RC download page. That page, in turn, has a big ol' link up at the top to the release notes. That page is a long list of new features (although I'll admit it's light on specifically what bugs were fixed, and what's "interesting" is subjective).

Re:Actual Release Notes

[Rysc]

Would you care to take a guess at how long that "sneak peak" has been there? Hint: Only since the RCs were out, i.e. not for the betas.

The release notes you reference read more like a brochure for Firefox 3 than any kind of useful information. When I see a beta3, for example, I want to know *what bugs present in beta2 were fixed in this release, with bugzilla references*. I understand that not every bug is significant and there could be a lot, but I expect to see at least a few "we fixed this problem identified in the last beta and here's the bug number" links.

Old Look?

[0100010001010011]

Are there any themes or settings where we can set everything back to the way it was? I'd love to look into the new back end features but I hate the new UI.

(I'm one of those guys that still has the single close tab in the upper right corner rather than on each tab).

Re:Old Look?

[spandex_panda]

can't you just drag and drop the UI around? The first thing I do is add a 'open new tab' button to the right of home. I really like the new address box search function.

Re:Old Look?

[Brian Gordon]

Firefox 2.0 Classic theme works great but to use it you have to:
-Register and log in to Firefox Addons
-Attempt to override the version check and install the theme
-Go to your %appdata% just after it fails and look for the temp XPI that it downloaded
-Copy it to the desktop and extract it with winrar
-Change the RDF file's <maxversion> to * or 3.0RC2 or something
-Zip the files back up, normal compression, rename to xpi
-Drag the file off the desktop into your firefox window to install!

Re:Old Look?

[Brian Gordon]

Yep, same here (FF3rc2 looking like FF2 wooo).. thought the address box search is really ugly when I already know the url and like 15 unrelated URLs are covering my screen while I type.

Re:Old Look?

[plover]

Here's another way to override the version that doesn't involve editing the XPI of everything you want to install:

http://lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions-work-with-the-firefox-3-beta

I've done this and nothing complains about compatibility any more. Of course, there's a huge downside: nothing guarantees compatibility any more, either!

So far, I've found that old themes do not work very well (I miss Pinball!) In my case, they caused the scrollbar on the right side to disappear. On the positive side, all of my extensions seem to work fine, and I run a lot of them. (13 of my extensions claim to not be Firefox 3.0 compatible, but still work.)

Re:Old Look?

[anti-pop-frustration]

The quickest way to make your extensions work with the new versions (without having to edit anything) is to use the Nightly Tester Tools:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543

Re:Old Look?

[Intron]

Ctrl-T, open in new tab preference, and right clicking in the tab bar aren't enough? You also need a button?

Re:Old Look?

[lbgator]

You may want to look into mouse gestures (there are a few different flavors). With this extension you can right click + drag up to open a new tab from anywhere in your FF screen. That way you can ctrl+t or mouse a new tab open (depending on where your hands are) in a fraction of the time it takes to move your mouse all the way to the top of the screen. I can hardly stand to internet without this gem.

Re:Old Look?

[kalirion]

Exactly. Why use two clicks/keys when one should be enough for something you (or at least I) do so often? I use "new tab" more often than home, or forward, or refresh, or stop.

Re:Old Look?

[Brian Gordon]

Very helpful! Though I'd steer clear of extensions.checkUpdateSecurity.. firefox forces addons to update themselves through SSL for added security and setting that value to false allows addons to update unsecurely. No reason to do that really unless you're using olllddd addons.

Re:Old Look?

[The MAZZTer]

The checkUpdateSecurity fix isn't needed anymore since addons.mozilla.org updated, IIRC.

Also I've seen three incompatible extensions will crash Firefox so be careful: Free Download Manager extension (not needed if you use FlashGot, and is installed drive-by without your permission by the installer, crashes whenever you right click anywhere), Google Gears (crashes whenever you go to any website that tries to use it), and outdated versions of Split Browser (crashes whenever you try to use it; it's been updated to work with 3.0 now).

Re:Old Look?

[Cassius Corodes]

If you use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) on a link it opens it in a new tab - so there one click :)

... Unless you are using a mac in which case you are stuck in the mouse stone age

Re:Old Look?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If you use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) on a link it opens it in a new tab - so there one click :) ... Unless you are using a mac in which case you are stuck in the mouse stone age

Yeah on a Mac it is cmd-click, by default. On my Mac I have the middle mouse button (scroll wheel button) globally set to activate Expose. Man I wish one of the Linux distros had that working by default, but alas you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a buggy clone. Speaking of the mouse stone age, has anyone seen a good, universal way to use mouse gestures across Ubuntu (not just in a specific application)? Also, does anyone know if Ubuntu is going to get support for two finger tapping/dragging on the track pad?

Re:Old Look?

[Anonymous Coward]

Series of hacks to get Firefox back to Firefox2-style;

1) open about:config
2) search for browser.Tabs.closebutton
3) set it to "3"**.
4) Search for browser.sessionstore.enabled
5) Set it to "false" (unless you like the "Do you want to restore your old session" on EVERY SINGLE STARTUP unless you bothered to quit properly.

That's it, unless you also want to get rid of the "list all tabs" button, in which case, a quick google search for "user-chrome.css list tabs remove" should yield instructions on how to get rid of it.

** For some reason, Firefox seems to constantly switch between putting the close tabs button on the left and right - RC2 is to the right, and I have no idea how to change this, I just get used to it....

Re:Old Look?

[tlhIngan]

If you use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) on a link it opens it in a new tab - so there one click :) ... Unless you are using a mac in which case you are stuck in the mouse stone age

Worked fine for me... I just click the scroll wheel on a link and bam, a new tab opens in the background on my Mac. Hey, it works in Safari too... and Opera.

Don't know what kind of Mac you're using, but they do work great with multibutton mice.

(And GUI designers can take a note about that - forcing a single button means you can't hide features away in right-click menus. There are literally Windows applications where the right click is used more often than left! Or heck, even Windows Explorer has modifier keys for right click - often Shift- or Alt- right-click can bring up a context menu with more actions.)

Re:Old Look?

[somersault]

I mostly use my Mac with the touchpad. I just Apple-Click to open a new tab.

Two fingers on the touchpad and a click simulates a right click, which was annoying at first, but now that I'm used to it I get pissed at having to find the right click button when I use another laptop, because I have to move my whole hand to place my thumb above the right button (which is sometimes smaller than the left so more awkward to reach), rather than just dropping down my middle finger then doing a normal click. For something designed for more than 2 buttons this system wouldn't work that well though, obviously. You'd have to move to using 3 finger clicks and maybe even 4 finger clicks, which could get confusing or simply inconvenient, especially if you don't have 5 fingers :P

If you put down 2 fingers on the pad and then move them around then it allows you to scroll - not just up and down either, it also does left and right :) Much better than a scroll wheel IMO, it's very natural feeling.

Obviously a mouse is still preferable for some tasks, but I just thought I'd point out how great Apple's trackpads are because of the multitouch thing. I hope more manufacturers copy (or license? :/ ) this.

Re:Old Look?

[somersault]

5) Do you always just crash firefox rather than quitting or something? I do like the 'do you want to restore your old session' if Windows happens to crash and I have more than one tab open.

Re:Old Look?

[Jellybob]

Do you always just crash firefox rather than quitting or something?

It's got a lot better since the RCs started to come out, but with the early betas it almost seemed easier to crash then go all the way up to that close button!

Re:Old Look?

[drewness]

Yeah. Damn my Mac with its 4 button Mighty Mouse with vertical and horizontal scroll ball. It's so stone age!

Oh. Wait. It's at least as good as the 3 button plus scroll wheel Logitech mouse I have on my Linux box. I can use the middle button for new tabs on both computers.

Re:Old Look?

[HTH NE1]

If you use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) on a link it opens it in a new tab - so there one click :) ... Unless you are using a mac Or unless you are using Linux and you miss the link because trying to click the scroll wheel caused the link to scroll away, so instead you've pasted your clipboard contents (often what you most recently had highlighted, even accidentally) to the current tab, and if the clipboard contained something Firefox could interpret as a valid URL or deduce a domain it will take you somewhere you likely didn't want to go and away from where you wanted to stay in that tab, instead of opening a new tab to the place you wanted to go.

On my Logitech mouse, clicking the scroll wheel toggles it between smooth and ratchety scrolling. Middle-click is one of the side buttons. I wish I had better drivers for it that enabled more of its buttons, but I don't have administrative permissions on my work machine.

Re:Old Look?

[AmiMoJo]

Make FF3 tabs more like 1.5, plus other useful stuff:

http://mojochan.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/firefox-tweaks/

Re:Old Look?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your brain segfaulting or something? Do you realise FF2 had already killed the "good" old close tab button?
By the way, you can still edit about:config and let closebuttons=3. That will bring the feature back.

Re:Old Look?

[BrokenHalo]

I don't get this thing about two fingers on the touchpad etc. I'm using an oldish iBook G4 right now (OS X 10.4.11), and leaving 2 fingers on the touchpad disables it. Is this a configuration issue I have overlooked, or is it a feature available only in Leopard?

Re:Old Look?

[Jherek Carnelian]

-- Register and log in to Firefox Addons What is with this registration required BS?

Firefox/Mozilla was the last group on the net that I would expect to forget that the web is about making information accessible rather than locking it up behind registration doors. Whatever fool decided that registration just to download was a good idea needs to be kicked off the team and have his internet privileges revoked.

I've found that not all add-ons require registration, but I can't figure out why some do and some don't. At least for the ones I wanted I was able to go to the author's own website and download from there.

Re:Old Look?

[kalirion]

True, and I do that a lot too. But quite often I want to go to a website that's (gasp) not linked to from the page I'm currently browsing!

Re:Old Look?

[random0xff]

I agree. The colors are too bright, green, blue, yellow, red, all very shiny and saturated. Some things changed for the worse, where there was nothing wrong. The close buttons on tabs have a focus style that's difficult to see. The downloads window, I don't know why they changed the visuals on that, there was really nothing wrong with it. And things that needed some work, like the customize toolbar window, still have a terrible interface (why not just show the buttons as I drag them, why can I resize that window until I see nothing?) The good thing is, there will probably be an add-on to change everything back.

Re:Old Look?

[prockcore]

Or heck, even Windows Explorer has modifier keys for right click - often Shift- or Alt- right-click can bring up a context menu with more actions

So does OSX. Command-right-click on a program in the dock gives you the previously-hidden "Force Quit".

Re:Old Look?

[Brian Gordon]

You need to register to access beta addons or outdated addons (to override the version check).

Re:Old Look?

[Mozk]

Sure, but when you're opening a new tab, you're more than likely going to be typing in an address, so you're hands would already be on the keyboard. Your handing may differ, but for me it's my palm on Ctrl and my index/middle finger on T, so it's more like one keypress. Also (considering Fitts's Law) it's probably easier to do that than move the mouse to a 30ish pixel^2 button.

But then again I know that it's hard to change interfaces when you're used to the older one. In fact I used to have that button too. But I also extremely dislike the new "awesomebar".

Here's my skin/layout just for info. It's a custom Stylish stylesheet (smoother than image shows), but if you're interested I can send it.

Re:Old Look?

[RiotingPacifist]

Man I wish one of the Linux distros had that working by default IMwheel allows you to set any mouse button to any global action. But do that few mac application make use of middle click you'd rather rebind it globally, as linux distros make much better use of the middle mouse button by default, on both application & a global select and paste level, crippiling it would be fairly stupid

has anyone seen a good, universal way to use mouse gestures across Ubuntu (not just in a specific application)? As for mouse gestures I dont know about Ubuntu, but KDE3 features global mouse gesture settings, and it can even set them up for non-kde apps.

Also, does anyone know if Ubuntu is going to get support for two finger tapping/dragging on the track pad? Tapping is already possible and universally used on every linux distro out there. Does anybody know if apple opened up their specs for the hardware implementation? otherwise reverse engineers will be along shortly, but may take a bit longer

Hope that answer's your questions, od right you were YAMFBT nvm.

Re:Old Look?

[RiotingPacifist]

How is that a problem when 2 mice buttons are normal? id rather all my features were hidden being right/left/middle clicks that use an over the top interface like itunes. Its more like forcing a single button means that lazy developers dont bother implementing useful actions for right and middle click.

Re:Old Look?

[RiotingPacifist]

For something designed for more than 2 buttons this system wouldn't work that well though, obviously, You'd have to move to using 3 finger clicks and maybe even 4 finger clicks, which could get confusing or simply inconvenient, especially if you don't have 5 fingers :P 3 fingers is doable, I just often drop back to the actually button because i forget. Unfortunately by default ubuntu hasn't set-up button4 so im not sure if im doing it right or its detecting it as 3 fingers anyway.

If you put down 2 fingers on the pad and then move them around then it allows you to scroll - not just up and down either, it also does left and right :) Much better than a scroll wheel IMO, it's very natural feeling. I always find the dragging much more annoying than running my finger down the side/bottom of a touchpad, but I think apple supports that too.

Obviously a mouse is still preferable for some tasks, but I just thought I'd point out how great Apple's trackpads are because of the multitouch thing. I hope more manufacturers copy (or license? :/ ) this. I never quite got the fuss behind them, i never wish that some obscure feature was doable with just mouse buttons and everything 'intuative' can be done with left/right click and drag or modifier+scroll wheel. As for copying them, I think their already out there its just that there is little demand for them and as such few manufactures use them.

Re:Old Look?

[plover]

Unfortunately, I needed to set extensions.checkUpdateSecurity to false because TargetAlert does not provide secure updates. (Actually, it hasn't been updated for about four years, so that's not much of a risk for it!) And I really find the little icons to let me know "opening a new window" or "downloading a PDF" or whatever to be very convenient.

Re:Old Look?

[shellbeach]

Or unless you are using Linux and you miss the link because trying to click the scroll wheel caused the link to scroll away, so instead you've pasted your clipboard contents (often what you most recently had highlighted, even accidentally) to the current tab, and if the clipboard contained something Firefox could interpret as a valid URL or deduce a domain it will take you somewhere you likely didn't want to go and away from where you wanted to stay in that tab, instead of opening a new tab to the place you wanted to go. about:config is your friend:

middlemouse.contentLoadURL "false"

(But seriously, didn't you even try to search the internet for a solution, rather than bitching about it on /. ??)

Re:Old Look?

[mixmasta]

Double-click the tab bar and get a new one ... that is the best way. Ctrl-T is the second. ;)

Re:Old Look?

[kbrosnan]

I know a work around has been posted. But this is not some random feature that Mozilla devs came up with. It is a common interaction in unix desktops and is specified in the Gnome HIG. http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/input-mouse.html.en

Your application uses the middle button to paste the current PRIMARY (usually the last-highlighted) selection at the pointer position, as follows:

Table 10-1 Effect of modifier keys on a middle button transfer operation Modifier Function
Unmodified Copy selection
Ctrl Copy selection
Shift Move selection
Shift+Ctrl Create link, shortcut or alias to selection

Do not over-ride this functionality in any part of your user interface where the transfer action is likely to be useful. If you do intend to use the middle button for a different purpose somewhere, only do so as a shortcut for experienced users, and only for operations that can also be performed without using the right button or middle button.

Re:Old Look?

[HTH NE1]

(But seriously, didn't you even try to search the internet for a solution, rather than bitching about it on /. ??) Just because I bitch about it doesn't mean I don't like or want the feature. It's just a problem in conjunction with the open-in-new-tab middle-click (which I also like) when bound to something that can move what you're clicking out from under the mouse pointer. It's just Firefox for Linux trying to do something useful with Linux's built-in middle-click paste after all.

(Highlight-copy and middle-click paste in Linux can be its own problem which sometimes requires using caps-lock so the window into which you intend to paste doesn't get focus, causing a field to be automatically highlighted, blowing away the clipboard data you'd intended to paste, so you have to highlight it again, remember to engage caps lock before pasting, and remember to disengage caps lock afterwards. That's a lot of aggravation for a feature designed to avoid having to hit control-c and control-v. But then control-c was already bound for stopping processes in Unix (and the Apple II).)

And as I said, I avoid the problem by having a mouse where middle-click is not scrollwheel click. So I guess the real bitch is mice that have clickable scrollwheels instead of an independent middle-click, and I've already worked around that. (This mouse replaced another where so much clicking on the scrollwheel had caused some turns of the scrollwheel not to register.)

But I may try enabling some of those other middlemouse fields on my Mac installation at home. I use the same model mouse on both Mac OS X and Linux; maybe I can get s similar experience there.

Re:Old Look?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

IMwheel allows you to set any mouse button to any global action.

Yeah, if only there was a good, Linux expose clone that actually worked all the time to assign to it. That was actually my complaint. Scale/compiz was dog slow and unstable as anything, but that's to be expected at this stage. I never got Skippy to actually work. It compiled and supposedly installed, but wouldn't actually activate.

...as linux distros make much better use of the middle mouse button by default, on both application & a global select and paste level, crippiling it would be fairly stupid.

I never use the middle mouse button in Linux for default actions. I actually have a 4 button mouse, but buttons 3 and 4 are either assigned to a custom action for an application or go unused. I don't know of any applications I run under Linux that have a useful default for the third button.

As for mouse gestures I dont know about Ubuntu, but KDE3 features global mouse gesture settings, and it can even set them up for non-kde apps.

I bailed on KDE about a year ago. It was just too hard to get the applications I wanted to install and run smoothly and stably. I don't mind tinkering for fun, but for my work machine that has to be optional and I founds myself wasting more and more time just trying to get something to run rather than getting my work done using that something. I switched to Ubuntu and it has been a huge difference. I'll give Kubuntu another chance in a year or so, but gestures are not, by themselves, enough to make the difference.

Tapping is already possible and universally used on every linux distro out there.

Tapping works, but two finger tapping doesn't seem to (to activate the second mouse button instead of the first). Not only does it not work by default on my Ubuntu system, there does not seem to be a GUI configuration option for it.

Does anybody know if apple opened up their specs for the hardware implementation? otherwise reverse engineers will be along shortly, but may take a bit longer

Is Apple's hardware actually different to allow this functionality? I doubt Apple's drivers are open, so if it does rely upon their hardware, specifically I can see it would take more work.

Re:Old Look?

[shellbeach]

(Highlight-copy and middle-click paste in Linux can be its own problem which sometimes requires using caps-lock so the window into which you intend to paste doesn't get focus, causing a field to be automatically highlighted, blowing away the clipboard data you'd intended to paste This isn't the behaviour I see on my own system (xorg 7.3). The selection buffer has the last selection made, not the selection in the active window, regardless of the status of the capslock key.

But anyway, even with middlemouse.contentLoadURL set to false, you can still paste urls into the location bar with a middle click.

Re:Old Look?

[HTH NE1]

It's a bug I'm experiencing with a (not Firefox) specific application's windows generated by Tcl under Gnome under Redhat 9, in click-to-focus mode. When the Tcl window is clicked and gets focus, it triggers a highlighting event for the entry field that last had focus in the window, which in turn triggers the copy-to-clipboard operation. Having caps-lock engage prevents the window from receiving focus, preventing the cascade of operations that would blow away the clipboard and allowing the clipboard contents to be pasted. Then I can middle-click paste into any of the fields.

Sometime soon I'm expecting being moved to ubuntu, though they're hesitant on purchasing new hardware here. My motherboard's memory is maxed out and I'm still running with 96% memory, 50% swap. I suspect Firefox 2 of being the memory hog, especially when it suddenly becomes the processor hog after a few days (used to be about every 24 hours of continuous running).

Re:Old Look?

[shellbeach]

Sometime soon I'm expecting being moved to ubuntu, though they're hesitant on purchasing new hardware here. My motherboard's memory is maxed out and I'm still running with 96% memory, 50% swap. I suspect Firefox 2 of being the memory hog, especially when it suddenly becomes the processor hog after a few days (used to be about every 24 hours of continuous running). Firefox2 is a memory hog ... or rather, it's got lots of memory leaks. Plus it never recovers well from ACPI sleep.

Why not give FF3 a go? The memory management situation is a *lot* better ...

Re:Old Look?

[HTH NE1]

Why not give FF3 a go? The memory management situation is a *lot* better ... I wanted to wait for Download Day.

Now that I have, I discover it doesn't want to run on Redhat 9 due to no libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 shared object file. So it looks like I'll have to wait until IT upgrades me to ubuntu first.

Re:Old Look?

[shellbeach]

try setting the environment variable MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 ... although it's pretty strange that RedHat doesn't provide libpangocairo ...

Crash

[kj0rn]

I've been using the pre alpha nightlies, then the alpha then betas and finally tried RC1

This crashed as soon as it started up

RC2 shows a web page but crashes as soon as I click on anything...

I'm using XP which is up to date with all patches. I know most tricks on how to get FF working... but I am stumpted as to why both RCs are so fucked on my computer. I've had to revert back to FF2 and I miss the URL bar and tagging :-(

Re:Crash

[toleraen]

Did you start with a fresh profile?

Re:Crash

[bunratty]

This link may help: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes

Retroactively screwed up?

[qwertphobia]

Wow, the update retroactively screwed up the story submission? That's slick!

I was just thinking, I will have just upgraded by the time I am done reading this po

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia Firefox updates YOU!

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Brian Gordon]

Oh lord you don't get the joke at all. The point is that he just

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[mangu]

In Soviet Russia Firefox updates YOU!

Yes, but you have to think in Russian

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[laejoh]

Yeah, but he did it all wrong, it should have looked like:

Oh lord you don't get the joke at all. The point is that he just #@!kks@9)&^^ÂÂ'é

NO CARRIER

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[junglee_iitk]

I am a subscriber, and I can see the stories before they are posted. I mailed "Big daddy" that the story is incomplete. Apparently, they don't even bother with it (anymore?)

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Candlejack isn't even present in this threa

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woooshhhhh

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[harry666t]

It's not funny anymore, how many times can you see people making the same joke again and again in a single thread?

Stop it here, ple

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[S.O.B.]

OK, you're taking it to f

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[lilomar]

I don't ge

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[junglee_iitk]

I understand the joke. I am just commenting that I informed Taco before the story "went public", and he still didn't corre

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[rugatero]

Neith

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[cbiltcliffe]

1. Find typo in story on /.
2. Repeat lame joke ad nauseum.
3. ?????

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[awwaiid]

3. P

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wat? A Candlejack thread? On my slashd

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[somersault]

I understand the joke Uh earth to junglee, I'm not so sure you did cause you were all "I mailed "Big daddy" that the story is incomplete" like you didn't know it was a joke!
[/Zoolander reference]

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[somersault]

Oh for fu

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Koiu Lpoi]

This joke would be a lot funnier if candlejack was inv

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[thegnu]

1. Find typo in story on /.
2. Repeat lame joke ad nauseum.
3. ????? 4.Profi

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[vivin]

I'm moderating this +

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a new feature (or bug) on Firefox
It clicks through all send and confirmation links by itself before it crashes.

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Soldrinero]

Stop it now, I mean it!

Anybody got a pea

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Rary]

OK, you're taking it too f

There, I fixed that fo

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[cp.tar]

Please do not sw

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[RealGrouchy]

Finland?

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[junglee_iitk]

I didn't :)

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fu

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you guys talking a

Re:Retroactively screwed up?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to get a li

Problems?

[Rik Sweeney]

And since my copy just finished downloading, I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any

Clearly, you did...

Re:Problems?

[alx5000]

Clearly, you whooshed...

what about minefield?

[amnezick]

i've been using minefield for a while now but i don't really care about these r2d2 releases. as long as it doesn't crash and webdeveloper, javascriptdebugger and foxmarks extensions work i'm happy.

fill in the blanks

[jollyreaper]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any Taco wants us to complete his post. My suggestions:

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any weasels in my trousers.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any eels in my hovercraft.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any embarrassing mistakes visible to the entire world, or at least as much of the world as comes here when bored.

Re:fill in the blanks

[spandex_panda]

ok ok i got one...

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any gerbils in my trousers.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any Hilary Clinton memorabilia lying around still.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any trouble

he heheeh he he uh.... hm....

Re:fill in the blanks

[Icarium]

It's not blank. There's a picture of a scary looking dinosaur head right there! I'd also stop typing if CowboyNe, er, a big scary dinosaur was coming for me!

Re:fill in the blanks

[Ctrl-Z]

Those wouldn't be iceweasels in his trousers, would they?

Re:fill in the blanks

[GPado]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any motherfucking snakes on my motherfucking plane.

Re:fill in the blanks

[plover]

If I had to guess, I think they'd be hot grits in his breakfast pants.

Re:fill in the blanks

[morgan_greywolf]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any browsers in Soviet Russia installing ME!!!

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have anyone welcoming our new customizable, multi-tabbed, XUL-based browser overlords!

Re:fill in the blanks

[Anonymous Coward]

African or European weasels?

Re:fill in the blanks

[xtracto]

Pants, the answer is pants. Remember, Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.

Re:fill in the blanks

[lilomar]

He doesn't know tha ..oh.

Re:fill in the blanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any eels in my hovercraft. if you're going to quote monty python use a better one.

Re:fill in the blanks

[sskagent]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any polls choices I need to be in

Re:fill in the blanks

[prockcore]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any sudden urges to hit submit prematurely.

Re:fill in the blanks

[joeman3429]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any anonymous cowards who don't like good monty python sketches replying to my threads

I'm excited about changeset 15261:49cdeb4f8144

[Anonymous Coward]

Just earlier today I was exhilarated to hear about changeset 15261:49cdeb4f8144.

Words cannot even begin to describe the anticipation building around the next changeset that will be made to Firefox. Hold on very tight everyone, the next one is going to change the world in ways you never imagined!

Installer?

[lasercats]

I just downloaded this, and the installer wanted to save to ..\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox 3 Beta 5. Maybe they just didn't update the installer?

Re:Installer?

[Idbar]

They did that since RC1, I guess they don't want to fill your computer with tons of copies as they did with Beta 2, Beta 3, etc, that I installed and remain there in different directories.

Momory Issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they address the memory issues? Or do they still insist that it is all a figment of the non-technical "user" imagination?

Re:Momory Issues?

[bunratty]

Yes
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html
http://www.thebrowserworld.com/2008/03/29/firefox-30-beta-4-vs-opera-950-beta-vs-safari-31-beta-multiple-sites-opening-test/
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/03/26/cybernotes-browser-performance-comparisons/

Re:Momory Issues?

[Icarium]

I hate not knowing if a poster's first language is English. Makes it difficult to weed out the easy targets.:/

Re:Momory Issues?

[Random BedHead Ed]

To clarify Mozilla's position on the matter:

1. There were no memory leaks in Firefox 2, and
2. These leaks have been fixed in Firefox 3.

Thank you for your understanding. :)

Re:Momory Issues?

[BZ]

Can you point me to where "they" (an actual active Gecko or Firefox developer, as opposed to a fanboy or a developer who hasn't been working on the project for months at the time of the claim) claim that memory usage is 'a figment of the non-technical "user" imagination'? Or are you just lumping together people who like to mouth off with people actually working on the browser?

Re:Momory Issues?

[BZ]

Sorry, I call bullshit. I have yet to see anyone actively working on Gecko or Firefox make claim #1.

Not that this helps prevent the perpetuation of the lies or anything...

Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

..that have been around for years such as this one:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=235853

Then I won't hold my breath for this release to me any more reliable or stable than any other from the last N years. Its about time they stopped doing a Microsoft and dicking about with "coooo , its so preeetty" UI stuff and bloatware functionalty that no one needs and starting fixing bloody bugs!

Yeah mod me down fanboys, see if I care, I'm just a user ,what do I know.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Frosty Piss]

Your linky doesn't go anywhere.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

Works fine for me.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[maxume]

Bugzilla might be rejecting incoming links from slashdot.org. Turn off referrers or just click on the link, click stop, and then click on the url bar and press enter.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Kamineko]

A critical hang bug:

Defer proxy resolution for HTTP and HTTPS PAC to avoid blocking main thread during DNS resolution

User-Agent:
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040225

This bug has been split from #224447 as the symptoms are different. I will copy
relevant comments from #224447 into this bug report.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to Preferences, Advanced, Proxies
2. Select "Automatic Proxy Configuration URL"
3. Enter a URL to a valid PAC file
4. Click OK
5. Browse a website (particularly one with many offsite adds/images)

Actual Results:
DNS resolution causes the UI to hang

Expected Results:
DNS resolution should not cause the UI to hang (it doesn't when using either
"Direct connection to the Internet" or "Manual Proxy Configuration")

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[bunratty]

Mozilla developers did try to fix it, but the patch failed a regression test and didn't make it for Gecko 1.9 (Firefox 3). I'm sure that for every release of Firefox, you can find some serious bug fix that didn't make the release. Likewise, I'm sure you can do the same for any major software project.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

https links don't pass referrer data you retarded faggot

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Lumpy]

Under OSX I have regular problems with firefox consuming all available memory (I only have 12 gig in this machine) by lunchtime. I also have times when it will suddenly stop allowing you to input any text and have to crash firefox to get it back.

I have reported the bugs, but do not see the problems get better with each beta or rc release.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[binaryspiral]

Mozilla developers did try to fix it, but the patch failed a regression test and didn't make it for Gecko 1.9 (Firefox 3). I'm sure that for every release of Firefox, you can find some serious bug fix that didn't make the release. Likewise, I'm sure you can do the same for any major software project. Insert obligatory Vista joke here.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[djseomun]

"Only" 12 gigs? I hope you're not talking about RAM.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Eric Pierce]

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=235853
"Bug 235853 - [PAC] Defer proxy resolution for HTTP and HTTPS PAC to avoid blocking main thread during DNS resolution"

Uh... real show stopper there, pal. Still rocking the web with Lynx?

Eric

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. You should all note that if you're using Linux and your $HOME directory is mounted on CIFS, your profile will NOT load.

Despite the fact that this works on Firefox 2, my request for this bug to block Firefox 3's release was denied because "it wasn't a regression from Ffx 2." (Which, clearly, it was.)

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[SilverJets]

Wow that's interesting because I used a PAC file for 5 years and never had a single issue with Firefox.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[andrewd18]

Its about time they stopped doing a Microsoft and dicking about with "coooo , its so preeetty" UI stuff and bloatware functionalty that no one needs and starting fixing bloody bugs!

I haven't seen any memory leaks in 3 yet. Its Javascript engine is light years faster. It doesn't have Edit -> Preferences alongside Tools -> Options anymore, just a single location at Tools -> Options.

Have fun waiting for HURD-fox 1.0. In the mean time, I'll take what's available.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[barzok]

FF3 betas and RCs have been far better about memory consumption on both my Mac and Thinkpad than any previous FF release. On OS X, it's better than Safari as well.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[darkmeridian]

Can someone please mod this guy down? How is this a critical bug, and what does he use--Internet Explorer? Firefox 3 is the best browser out there in terms of functionality, features, reliability, security, and availability. (Safari is nice, but only for Macs. Opera doesn't work with many banking and financial web sites that work fine with Firefox. Internet Explorer is Internet Explorer.)

The Mozilla developers have made Firefox 3 faster, more responsive, and more reliable than Firefox 2. The features were added without bloating up the program at all. Software has bugs, and nitpicking without pointing out BETTER alternatives is kind of stupid.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Jugalator]

Then I won't hold my breath for this release to me any more reliable or stable than any other from the last N years. Its about time they stopped doing a Microsoft and dicking about with "coooo , its so preeetty" UI stuff and bloatware functionalty that no one needs and starting fixing bloody bugs! lol.. Since when is stuff like being able to cross-session resume downloads "bloatware"? Or have status info without opening the download manager? Or the new web developer support? The UI stuff is just what you see easily if you don't care to look, which you quite obviously haven't.

Have you even read a changelog?

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Firehed]

I came in to work a couple days ago with my copy of FF3RC1 consuming ~1.25GB, of 4GB (Err... 3.2GB - WinXP). Similar results, though not quite as bad, on my about-equivalent spec MBP at home.

RC2 has been far kinder to me - so far it's hovered around 200MB (down from an average of 350MB on the same system with RC1) and doesn't explode when Flash usage.

If you're seeing FF suck down "all available memory" then there's obviously a serious problem, especially on a system with that much available. Tried reinstalling? I find that on most systems, Firefox tends to take about 5-10% of my installed RAM, which is fair for a program that's in use 80% of my day.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Midnight Thunder]

Under OSX I have regular problems with firefox consuming all available memory (I only have 12 gig in this machine) by lunchtime. I also have times when it will suddenly stop allowing you to input any text and have to crash firefox to get it back.

Its at times like this that makes me wonder why more programs don't take advantage of garbage collectors. Sure a well written program should be releasing object when they are no longer needed, but as complexity increases there will always be a missed case. This where the garbage collectors helps out.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

Actually "pal" , it is when the bloody app is multi threaded and the whole damn lot hangs including editing windows just because some other page looked up a link that our DNS server choked on. You wait 3 mins for your browser to come back when you're trying to work and see how minor it is to you.

You a firefox dev by any chance?

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Lumpy]

Yes I only have 12 gigs of ram in my mac. I should have a full 20 gigs but I cant afford it.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

"How is this a critical bug,"

Which definition of "hang" arn't you familiar with?

"what does he use--Internet Explorer? "

On Linux? That'd be a first.

"Firefox 3 is the best browser out there in terms of functionality, features, reliability, security, and availability."

Whatever you say fanboy.

"Software has bugs, and nitpicking without pointing out BETTER alternatives is kind of stupid."

A major bug that hasn't been fixed for 4 years isn't what I'd call nitpicking.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

Wow , like maybe you didn't have DNS issues? Wow , like you'd think someone would be able to like put 2 + 2 together. Wow.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[cbiltcliffe]

Who in their right mind uses proxy auto config, anyway?
If you've got a bunch of desktops in an organization, they should all be properly set statically by IT, and if you're not in such an organization, you probably don't need proxy settings at all.

I'm sure there are some fringe cases where you'd need it, for example, laptops that move from one site to another within an organization, therefore need different proxy settings for each site, but really, how common is that?

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

"Who in their right mind uses proxy auto config, anyway?"

Many many companies.

"If you've got a bunch of desktops in an organization, they should all be properly set statically by IT,"

Why bother statically allocating 10,000 odd IP addresses if you can get DHCP to do it for you for free?

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[ostiguy]

Who in their right mind uses proxy auto config, anyway?

I'm sure there are some fringe cases where you'd need it, for example, laptops that move from one site to another within an organization, therefore need different proxy settings for each site, but really, how common is that? Common enough that they developed a proxy auto config standard.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[cbiltcliffe]

Why bother statically allocating 10,000 odd IP addresses if you can get DHCP to do it for you for free? We're not talking about IP addresses, here. We're talking about the browser proxy. For DHCP, I'd agree with you completely. But for the browser proxy, I have yet to see any organization with more than one, including the local university that has research journal subscriptions that are only available to someone who's logged into the proxy server.
Unless you've got:

1. multiple proxy servers at your organization,
and
2. the need to bounce between proxy servers during a single login session

then you'd be able to set this one time with something as simple as a login script, and never have to touch it again.

Like I said...I'm sure there are a few fringe cases, but I've dealt with IT in some pretty large organizations before, and never seen the need to do anything like this before.
Now, having said that, I'm capable of shell scripting, so maybe PAC is easier for the point-n-grunt admins......

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Albanach]

Does it occur to you that the UI developers might not be the best set of folk to be fixing a proxy/dns resolution bug?

Not that I think the bug should take that long to squash, but it's a crap argument to say they shouldn't develop any other part of the application while they wait for it being fixed.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what your PAC file does. Any Javascript function called from a PAC file which does DNS resolution can trigger the problem, i.e. isInNet(), isResolvable() & dnsResolve().

DNS resolution carried out by the JS engine will bring your whole browser to a halt until a DNS response is retrieved. Slow responses from a DNS server (which is not under your control) are extremely disruptive.

The only real workaround to this problem is to avoid using functions like the above entirely, or at the least, only use them when you know the target host's domain is authoritatively served by a DNS server that you have direct control over. Which is a pain, because isInNet() in particular can be very useful.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it a hunch, but judging by your responses to everyone, maybe nobody cares about your problem because you act like a dick? I appreciate someone getting pissed off, but if you want people to fix stuff for you acting surley even when your in the right won't help.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[djseomun]

May I ask what it is that you do for a living? As a student majoring in business, 2 gigs of RAM on my laptop is good enough for everything that I do.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Lumpy]

Crestron Programming... but I do video editing on my quad core mac tower.

Actually I should also add ram to the old G5 dual core mac tower as well, as that works great as a render node and adding a lot of ram to that makes a difference.

when you edit HD video, you need ram. lots of ram.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[B3ryllium]

It's not a major bug. It's just a bug.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[machine321]

Wah! They won't fix my favorite bug! Nobody's doing anything about it, like submitting patches or suggesting workarounds!

Oh wait, yes they are. They already have a fix, but the fix breaks their regress testing, so it missed 1.9.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Jellybob]

Woah there. Can I suggest you take a step away from your computer, and maybe even go outside and get some fresh air.

If you're reacting that extremely to someone not realising secure http doesn't pass a referer header I dread to think what you might do to somebody with real problems.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Jellybob]

Under OSX I have regular problems with firefox consuming all available memory (I only have 12 gig in this machine) by lunchtime.

I'm going to call bull on that... either that, or you're doing XUL based protein folding.

My laptop has 2 gig, and Firefox has never got anywhere near eating that.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[slamb]

Argh! Yeah, I hate that bug ("[PAC] Defer proxy resolution for HTTP and HTTPS PAC to avoid blocking main thread during DNS resolution")!

I wrote a proxy server to run on localhost, do DNS resolution, and send the request to the appropriate upstream proxy or directly to the source, just to work around this bug.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Dragonslicer]

It doesn't have Edit -> Preferences alongside Tools -> Options anymore, just a single location at Tools -> Options. The Ubuntu version of RC1 only has Edit -> Preferences, and it really annoys me. I'm surprised nobody has complained about it enough to get it changed.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[pdusen]

lmao, looks like you're the only one who cares here, friend.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh probably because you asked it to be a blocker for wrong release? From this comment it seems you made it blocking for one of the Firefox 2.x releases? "Not sure why you would ask for it to block Firefox 2.0.0.15 when you say it works there so please don't mass request flags that you don't understand.?" By the way you had marked it "blocking1.8.1.15?"

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[barry99705]

I love when people complain about not having enough ram. Especially when they have more gigs in ram than I have gigs on my laptop hard drive.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that (a) the same people who are developing the UI are the ones who would be fixing network bugs, and (b) there are no bug fixes here. Looking at the bug fix list for RC2, I see 9 of the 31 were crashers.

Disclaimer: I'm not the best person to answer this, because I'm not sure what "doing a Microsoft" means, or who said "coooo , its so preeetty" or what "bloatware functionality [] no one needs" has been added, or why anybody modding down your inane comment would need to be a "fanboy". Disclosure: I'm not even using Firefox.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Enderandrew]

I have never once seen Firefox use 12 gigs of RAM. That being said, I'm not doubting it may be possible given a specific build, and specific combination of extensions.

1 - Backup and then delete your Mozilla profile.
2 - Install a fresh copy of Firefox 3 RC2.
3 - Watch your memory problems go away.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Knuckles]

Edit > Preferences is the location of the preferences dialog in every other Gnome program. No reason to complain about consistency. Furthermore, Edit > Preferences makes actually sense. "Tools" does not, because preferences are not a tool.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[djseomun]

Understood. I guess in your profession 12 gigs is "Meh."

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[level4]

Now, having said that, I'm capable of shell scripting, so maybe PAC is easier for the point-n-grunt admins...... Totally agreed. I haven't been a Windows admin for over 4 years now and I can still remember how I could do this in about 5 minutes. I can only assume he's using a domain controller, the login script would be about 3 lines long.

My answer to the OP's question "why haven't they fixed this bug" is "because no-one cares, and if you had any skill at your job at all, you wouldn't either".

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[jez9999]

I wish to download your proxy server, and subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[jez9999]

How is this a critical bug

To be fair, it is marked as critical in Bugzilla. God knows why.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Eric Pierce]

Can I raise the 'dick' card on myself? Sorry, I spouted off w/o knowing what the hell I was talking about.

Can we just chalk this one up to a case of Slashdotitis? ;)

Sorry again, Viol8.
Eric

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

"My answer to the OP's question "why haven't they fixed this bug" is "because no-one cares, and if you had any skill at your job at all, you wouldn't either"."

Sorry , are you just stupid or deliberately being an ass? I don';t have a choice about using PAC at work , nor do I have a choice about using Firefox. So please explain how this means I don't have any skill at my job or was that post just some feeble attempt at karma whoring?

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

Since you've been modded down to zero I think you might have made the wrong call there friend.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[commanderfoxtrot]

I find DNS causes Firefox to hang (until resolved) frequently. I use "automatic proxy" or "auto proxy url" as you do.

Seems odd that it would be written such that a DNS query would block the UI thread... but Outlook 2003 works (or doesn't) in much the same way!

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a good solution. You wouldn't care to share your code with us, would you?

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[pdusen]

It only takes one to mod you down to zero, friend.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[slamb]

I wish to download your proxy server, and subscribe to your newsletter.

All right. It's a work in progress (no keepalives yet; requires libevent trunk + a few not-yet-merged patches), but I'm willing to share what I have. I've traveling now, but I'll put something on my website Monday night. I'll call it FoxIgniter, unless someone has a better name.

Re:Until they bother fixing critical bugs...

[Viol8]

Didn't happen though did it, in fact I got a +5. Thanks for playing.

Works for me.

[linko47]

Just clicked help > check for updates in Debian. Upgraded just fine and is working as normal. :-)

Who cares!

[Kamineko]

None of us have any, you insensitive clod!

To late?

[Icarium]

If it's gone to late, will it be back?

Yeah, I suck as a spelling Nazi.

Re:To late?

[Smidge207]

No, partner, you suck as a grammar Nazi.

=Smidge=

Re:To late?

[hvm2hvm]

How do you know it was a grammar mistake and not a spelling one? It's a probable spelling error.

And yeah, I'm some kind of deductive and/or assuming Nazi.

Re:To late?

[joeman3429]

You're right, it's more of a spelling mistake then a grammatical mistake. But it all depends on his intent. If he didn't know to use the correct word, then it's grammar. If he knew the right word, but for whatever reason forgot the extra letter, then it's spelling.

*sigh* I guess we'll never know

Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[elrous0]

Just release the damn thing already!

Re:Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

So then you can complain about a rough feature that wasn't polished up enough in the rushed betas or a critical bug that wasn't fixed during the rushed release candidates? No thanks.

Gecko 1.9 (the basis of Firefox 3) is likely to be with us for a while. In fact, Gecko 2.0 is so far away that a Gecko 1.9.1 is planned to fix bugs that affected projects other than Firefox and make it a generally stable platform to work with until Gecko 2.0 is finally with us. Any rushing here and we'll be regretting it for a while.

Re:Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[Keeper Of Keys]

w00t! Let's release a new version of one of the most widely-used pieces of open source software without thoroughly testing it!

Re:Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Mushroom, Mushroom

Re:Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[Plug]

Beta Beta Beta Beta Mushroom Mushroom

Re:Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta, RC, RC

[elrous0]

This is slashdot. I'm going to bitch about it no matter HOW good the finished product is.

Sudden end!?!?

[that_itch_kid]

I hope I don't have any ...any what!?!? Memory leaks!?!? Fried CPUs!!? WHAT!?!? OH GOD, IT'S TAKEN HIM!! IT'S GOING TO KILL US ALL!!!

Re:Sudden end!?!?

[mamono]

Perhaps he was dictating!

firefox wishlist

[distantbody]

1. option NOT to save descriptions with bookmarks
2. Store only ONE copy of a favicon if more than one bookmark uses it, bookmarks.html could do with being a lot smaller.
3. drag text down page/between tabs

Of course all of these could be made as addons, but as I have not been able to find such addons, they might as well be built in as they should represent core functionality. My final secret little dream addon is a grammar addon, oh how the net could be a better place ;)

Re:firefox wishlist

[andrewd18]

My final secret little dream addon is a grammar addon, oh how the net could be a better place ;) Only you can prevent Grammar-ton Clerics.

Re:firefox wishlist

[Omestes]

Didn't they kill bookmarks.html, isn't it now completely based on SQL-lite (light?)?

My only complaints with the Firefox3 stretch of betas is the "unfiled bookmarks" area. It sort of makes them a hidden graveyard of sites that you at one time or another found neat, since you can't access them from any menu outside of the "Library" window. In this vein, searching history is damn slow, and seems rather clunky.

The only technical bug I've found is spellcheck's insistence to stop working halfway through writing an email in gmail, and other random forms, especially after a certain amount of length or time (can't figure out which). Spellcheck is also damn stupid at times, and doesn't recognize most tech-based terms (such as, laughably "Firefox"), and often doesn't suggest common words based off a near misspelling.

Other than that it is much better than FF2, once you get used to the awesomebar (which is becomes indispensable slowly, I find my friends/parents installs of FF2 to be gimped now), and massive back button. I'm even getting used to the new OS X look on my Mac, there still is something terribly wrong with its looks though.

Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

- New versions break older extensions. Until the extension is updated, bye bye extension. I don't enjoy that hassle and it makes me think twice about upgrading.

- Old versions constantly redirect to a page suggesting you upgrade. I don't want my software to nag me into submission thanks. I don't need to be babysat.

- New versions force you to use new features without providing functionality to back it out even when the user wants it. Eg. The new supercoolsearchbar garbage. I don't want my browser looking though my bookmarks when I type a URL but I don't mind it searching history that clears itself regularly.

- Firefox is the one application i use regularly that I find myself killing using task manager regularly. It either hangs or hogs memory which is only released by restarting. Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. Even refuse to fix it. But stop denying there are memory management issues.

- There's no graceful way to exit that doesn't pop up a thousand confirmations if you do keep the close tab confirmation active.

- I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

Firefox USE to be a better user experience than IE. I can't say that anymore and it stinks that I can't. I want my Firefox browser back!

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[bunratty]

Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. Even refuse to fix it. But stop denying there are memory management issues.

If you're seeing that problem, it should be fixed. Could you give the URL of a page that refreshes itself and causes Firefox to use more and more memory? What OS (including version) and version of Firefox are you using? Did you try creating a new profile?

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Fri13]

- New versions force you to use new features without providing functionality to back it out even when the user wants it. Eg. The new supercoolsearchbar garbage. I don't want my browser looking though my bookmarks when I type a URL but I don't mind it searching history that clears itself regularly. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Or type to addressbar about:config and search "browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped" and set it as "true"

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? Have you ever used Firefox?

Right now, I have one tab open, to this page, and FF is using 210MB simply because it's been open for a while and I've been using it without restarting it.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tokul]

I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

1. You don't lose installed extensions each time you upgrade firefox. They are installed in your user's profile.

2. You can download and keep your extensions. Just download xpi files instead of installing them.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Phylarr]

I'd add to that list that there's no way to manage plugins except to manually delete the files.

iTunes has helpfully made itself a FF plugin, and the only way to stop the iTunes plugin from loading when FF launches is to either disable loading of ALL plugins, or delete the npitunes.dll file from my computer. But iTunes puts the file back every time I launch it, so that doesn't really work.

Being complicit in letting a shitty program take over my computer is an unforgivable sin as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[itamihn]

Nightly Tester Tools extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543) solves the extension compatibility for me, in almost every update (i.e. when the version checking is the problem itself, and not real underlying changes)

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

They are trying to address memory management issues in this release.

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tepples]

Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. If a page is left going for fifteen minutes without any user interaction, it could just stop running scripts on that page until the user presses a key or moves the mouse. Would that be an acceptable fix?

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[YojimboJango]

I feel his pain, those extensions take like 10 seconds to download and install. Woe is me.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[colesw]

I think you proved his point here. Either you have to download a add on, or go int about:config, why isn't it a option under Tools->Options?

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[dealmaster00]

- There's no graceful way to exit that doesn't pop up a thousand confirmations if you do keep the close tab confirmation active. Actually there is; when you close, you just click the check mark that says "Do not prompt me again when closing x or more tabs."

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[JustinOpinion]

Huh? Are you using the same "Firefox" as me?

1. What do you mean? Yes, Firefox 3 isn't compatible with (some) Firefox 2 extensions. But then again, Firefox 3 is a whole new version... and it's still at release-candidate level. I've never had extensions break during an incremental upgrade, for instance. (If they become marked as incompatible, that's the fault of the extension author, who should have set compatibility as 2.* or whatever.)

2. I've never seen that. Normally it just downloads the incremental update and applies it on the next restart.

3. Well many of us happen to like the new functionality of the combined address-bar/search-bar. However, it's trivial to return to the old-style behavior if that's what you want (e.g. this). The same is true of most other changes. Firefox is very customizable.

4. Sorry to hear that it's unstable on your system. On the systems I use, Firefox 3 has been decidedly more stable than Firefox 2. Faster, too. From various things I've read, it sounds like the typical experience is that Firefox 3 is faster, more stable, and more robust than Firefox 2. But, as always, your mileage may vary.

5. Huh? When you try to exit, there is a single confirmation box, which can be disabled. It doesn't pop up "a thousand confirmations". Exaggerate much?

6. Huh? I've never had to re-download extensions when upgrading Firefox (even when installing a whole new version). The only time extensions re-download is when a new version of the extension is available. But... how exactly do you propose to get the new version without downloading it?

I'm sorry that you seem to be having troubles with Firefox. From what I can tell, this isn't a typical experience. Also, note that you're most welcome to keep using older versions if they suit you better.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

http://oldversion.com/

Enjoy and quit whining

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Inda]

Who modded this up? What are you, 12?

It's a beta/RC. You're supposed to be testing it, not using it for mission critical eBay auctions and suchlike.

I don't know about the rest of you but I kept FF2 installed alongside FF3b3-RC2. I do not jump through hoops when browsing, I go back to FF2. Yes, I miss some extensions but they are there if I feel the need to hack them about (I don't). Yes, it can be a pain when my bank doesn't support FF3rc2 but they've said they'll support FF3 final, so all is good.

Moaning fuckers.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tobiasly]

- New versions break older extensions. Until the extension is updated, bye bye extension. I don't enjoy that hassle and it makes me think twice about upgrading.

What's your solution here? Freeze the extension API forever? It's up to the extension developers, not Mozilla, to make sure they're compatible and mark them so. If you know what you're doing you can bypass this check, but at your own peril.

New versions force you to use new features without providing functionality to back it out even when the user wants it. Eg. The new supercoolsearchbar garbage. I don't want my browser looking though my bookmarks when I type a URL but I don't mind it searching history that clears itself regularly.

See, there's this great new search engine called Google.com, and if you go there and type "Firefox 3 disable awesomebar", the very first link describes exactly how to do that. But somehow I get the feeling you'd rather complain about it than actually take it upon yourself to do something about it.

Firefox is the one application i use regularly that I find myself killing using task manager regularly. It either hangs or hogs memory which is only released by restarting. Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. Even refuse to fix it. But stop denying there are memory management issues.

OK, now it's painfully obvious you're either a troll or haven't been paying attention at all. Every Firefox 3 article I've read since the betas started coming out gushed over how memory management was so much better than in 2, how faster it is, etc. The Mozilla devs publicly discussed in many locations all the work they went through to find and plug memory leaks, prevent circular references in Javascript and extensions from tying up memory, etc.

Again I'm pretty sure you'd rather just complain than actually read about it but your friend Google will help you find plenty of information on this.

There's no graceful way to exit that doesn't pop up a thousand confirmations if you do keep the close tab confirmation active.

I can't even parse this one. You leave the tab-close confirmation on, but don't want it to confirm when you close tabs? Whatever your issue here is, I'm sure there's a setting or extension for it if you'd take 2 minutes to research.

I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

Right-click, Save Link As...

Firefox USE to be a better user experience than IE. I can't say that anymore and it stinks that I can't. I want my Firefox browser back!

What exactly is it about IE you would like Firefox to emulate?

And how does drivel like this get modded "Insightful"?!

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[superyooser]

- I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

Yes you can. Just right-click on the .xpi file and save it somewhere, like on a flash drive. When you want to install the extension, open the .xpi via File|Open or drag the xpi onto the Add-ons window. I keep all my extensions in a special folder.

Now, maybe you meant that Firefox doesn't offer a feature specially designed for storing the xpi files somewhere to be reinstalled. I don't think there's enough demand to merit that enhancement being added. Sounds like a reasonable idea for an extension, though. :)

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tobiasly]

I'd add to that list that there's no way to manage plugins except to manually delete the files. iTunes has helpfully made itself a FF plugin, and the only way to stop the iTunes plugin from loading when FF launches is to either disable loading of ALL plugins, or delete the npitunes.dll file from my computer. But iTunes puts the file back every time I launch it, so that doesn't really work.

And I assume you've tried going to Tools -> Add-Ons -> Plugins and disable it? (I agree, iTunes is garbage and I don't use it so I can't test this explicitly)

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[theaceoffire]

- New versions break older extensions. Until the extension is updated, bye bye extension. I don't enjoy that hassle and it makes me think twice about upgrading.

I don't see why they should bother upgrading the plugins until the browser is released.

- Old versions constantly redirect to a page suggesting you upgrade. I don't want my software to nag me into submission thanks. I don't need to be babysat.

I bet this is an old habit, since many new users are fresh from IE and have possibly never updated anything without windows update.

- New versions force you to use new features without providing functionality to back it out even when the user wants it. Eg. The new supercoolsearchbar garbage. I don't want my browser looking though my bookmarks when I type a URL but I don't mind it searching history that clears itself regularly.

Try it for a bit. I had to get used to it, but it lets me find things that I had *already* spent hours searching for, bookmarked, and forgot I had it in the thousands of things I have saved over the years. And of course if it REALLY ticks you off (Like it does some people), I have no doubt someone will have an addon once this thing gets released just for you.

- Firefox is the one application i use regularly that I find myself killing using task manager regularly. It either hangs or hogs memory which is only released by restarting. Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. Even refuse to fix it. But stop denying there are memory management issues.

Dude, have you even TRIED the beta? How did you get informative? Not only is this the fastest version of firefox to date, but it has the lowest memory footprint of almost all browsers, and has a memory manager that not only releases unused data but data that points to itself. Please try the browser next time before insulting it.

- There's no graceful way to exit that doesn't pop up a thousand confirmations if you do keep the close tab confirmation active.

O.o I don't under stand this, you mean if you don't turn off the "Warn me when I close tabs", it warns you if you close tabs? Isn't this a good thing?

- I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

This is due to them not upgrading that version number in the plugin. ^_^ You *can* save the plugin to your computer, and then use that forever and forever by using the nightly tools plugin, and never download again... but these things are *tiny*, much smaller than a youtube video. Not only that, but you can now search for and install plugins from WITHIN the browser, which I find amazingly helpful.

Firefox USE to be a better user experience than IE. I can't say that anymore and it stinks that I can't. I want my Firefox browser back!

Its faster, smaller, less memory with more features. It has massive number of plugins, renders pages correctly, and is easy to uninstall. And there is nothing stopping you from using older versions of the browser.

In short I feel you just don't remember how bad IE really is.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[__aardcx5948]

FF3 RC2 using 92MB of RAM at the moment on this XP SP2 machine, with 8 tabs (1 Slashdot, the rest http://www.idg.se/ ). Only extension I'm using is adblock.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[TractorBarry]

> I can't download and keep my extensions for future install.

You can indeed do that. When getting an extension right click on the "Add To Firefox" button, save the .xpi file somewhere on your local machine/network then drag and drop the .xpi onto Firefox to install.

I usually save extensions onto a network share and then "drag and drop" install onto whichever box I'm currently using (i.e. Linux box, Windows box) etc.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[junglee_iitk]

Listen, if you don't use oldbar, don't suggest it. Because anyone who has used oldbar even ONCE knows that it is nothing but a UI hogwash - the awesomebar's aweful features still remain - they just don't look fancy.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[junglee_iitk]

Here is the first line from the link you give:

UPDATE: The browser.urlbar.richResults preference checking was removed in bug 407836.

After which it suggests oldbar. And believe me, I have yet to find one single person who suggests oldbar is also using it.

Right-click, Save Link As...

What save as? Javascript?

Enough with the fanboyism, ok?

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Malc]

Oh please. How about normal usage? I exited Firefox the other day as it was using 750MB of memory. When it restarted with all the tabs and their history: 135MB. It's been leaking memory for years, across many releases. Yes it should be fixed, but your response is also typical of the Mozilla devs. They're useless; I wouldn't hire them for my team. They'll deny there's ever a problem for years, and will normally be proven wrong. I stopped submitting issues to Bugzilla more than six years ago because it was clearly a waste of time. Don't get me started about the BITMAP resource leak they denied existed but caused Win2K to BSOD for me for two years. Of course it couldn't be an app that brings down the OS! Let's blame nVidia for their drivers, ignoring that only FF caused the crash, and that it had a serious resource leak. *sigh* Moving on...

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Phylarr]

Are you thinking of Tools->Add-Ons->Extensions? Because that exists on my FF. Similar control of Plugins does not.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[cbiltcliffe]

But that makes the close tab confirmation inactive, which was one of his conditions.

By the sounds of it, the GP wants Firefox to warn him when closing multiple tabs, but he doesn't want to be bothered with any warnings.

?????

GP, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that sure sounds like what you're saying.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Kopiok]

- I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox.

You might want to check out FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) and it's sister extension CLEO (Compact Library Extension Organizer). Those will backup all your extensions and even put them all in one XPI file for easy installation.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, fuckwit! Start using facts instead of fanboy drivel!

FF3 is a step in the right direction memory-wise and a step in the wrong direction for everything else. And yes, I'm using it.

I miss the days of 0.8 when we could get all that shit we didn't need but might want via *extensions*.

And disabling the "awesomebar" (whoever named the piece of shit that is a shithead that deserves to get kicked in the face repeatedly) is now impossible because the later betas removed the ability to disable it.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[linuxci]

Are you thinking of Tools->Add-Ons->Extensions? Because that exists on my FF. Similar control of Plugins does not. It does in version 3

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[John Hasler]

I have had almost exactly the same experience on Linux. My machine is always on. The fact is that Firefox grows with use until has to be killed and restarted or it runs me out of memory. It has always done this and the developers have always denied it.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Fri13]

Why you should have all possible options and possibilities on Tools > Options? Why we cant keep the browser itself small and add those features as addons, even the old features what are OLD features. At least you can have the old feature with add-on, and you dont need to take source code and start coding to get it...

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tobiasly]

Here is the first line from the link you give:

UPDATE: The browser.urlbar.richResults preference checking was removed in bug 407836. After which it suggests oldbar. And believe me, I have yet to find one single person who suggests oldbar is also using it.

Yes, I was referring to OldBar, not the disabled preference. And you're correct in that I haven't tried OldBar, since I love the new address bar, but the fact that it has a five-star rating from its users, plus many comments saying that it works very well, led me to believe it would serve the OP's needs.

Right-click, Save Link As...

What save as? Javascript?

Right-click on the big green box that says "Add To Firefox", and choose "Save Link As", then save it as .XPI, which is the standard extension format for XUL-based apps such as Firefox and Thunderbird.

Enough with the fanboyism, ok?

Sometimes a little fanboyism is needed to counter others who spew nonsense that hasn't been true for a very long time, or hasn't been researched at all.

Believe me, I was as big a critic of Firefox 2 and its horrendous memory management issues as anyone else, but in the open-source world it's also very important to give credit where credit is due, and in the case of Firefox 3 they have done an excellent job.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tobiasly]

Are you thinking of Tools->Add-Ons->Extensions? Because that exists on my FF. Similar control of Plugins does not.

Firefox 3 added a new Plugins tab to the Add-Ons dialog. If it's not present for you, I'd suggest starting with a new profile; your old FF2 themes or extensions may be keeping it from showing for some reason...

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[tomtomtom777]

I feel his pain, those extensions take like 10 seconds to download and install. Woe is me.

Not everyone can afford a 56k6, you rich, insensitive clod!

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[junglee_iitk]

I stand corrected. You cannot suggest eye-drops for a headache, and counter by saying that it has good reviews.

I agree with memory issues, and that is why I am using nightly builds since beta5. But the attitude of Firefox developers is astonishing.

Fanboyism never helps, btw. Look at wikipedia for example!

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does drivel like this get modded "Insightful"?!

The same way your equally lame counterargument was modded Informative

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[bunratty]

The "normal usage" for Firefox is using less memory than other browsers. This has been repeatably verified, not just by Mozilla developers:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html
http://www.thebrowserworld.com/2008/03/29/firefox-30-beta-4-vs-opera-950-beta-vs-safari-31-beta-multiple-sites-opening-test/
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/03/26/cybernotes-browser-performance-comparisons/
Now, again, if you see any memory problem, you'll have to be specific about what it is. The rest of us don't see it. It's not "denial," it's just the truth.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, all this is no solution.

oldbar is just about presentation.
matchOnlyTyped will continue to look for every place in URL.

I personally demand the old *searching* behaviour. Clear and predictable. I don't mind the appearance.

What you could do with Firefox 2, and cannot now, with all the twicking in about:config you could imagine, is:

type first letter of URL, go down once, enter.

That's 26 different places. I *never* had to type more than two letters in my URL to go to my usual websites.
Now, if I have gnagna.truc and bidule.gnagna, it will go to the second one if I type g and visit bidule.gnagna more often.
There are a thousand quirks like that which makes current search *unpredictable*, and reduces the selectivity, meaning that a same result can be obtained by several ways and, as a corollary, you get less possible different results for the same number of keystrokes.

I can understand that some people would prefer the "awesome" bar. But I want to be able to revert to the old behaviour. And I cannot understand why it is not an option.

Jonas

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[RobBebop]

Also, note that you're most welcome to keep using older versions if they suit you better.

This is a particularly good thing about F/OSS software. Many years ago (circa 2002) I became so frustrated by the cruft that had been added to the AIM chat client (no, I do not want video advertisements to auto-load!), so I searched around their site and found a "Windows 95" release for backwards compatibility with older systems. I used that version for several years before switching to Linux and picking up GAIM/Pidgin.

But yeah, I got lucky that AOL published an old version of their software. In F/OSS, that isn't luck. It's standard.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[msuarezalvarez]

I personally demand the old *searching* behaviour. Clear and predictable. I don't mind the appearance.

You demand?

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I demand.

That's not a new feature, that's something that was there and was taken away.

I do not ask for it to be the default. I do not ask for it to be obvious to find. But, hell, since it already exists, it should be there, as an option at least.

Jonas

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[bmorency]

Now, maybe you meant that Firefox doesn't offer a feature specially designed for storing the xpi files somewhere to be reinstalled. I don't think there's enough demand to merit that enhancement being added. Sounds like a reasonable idea for an extension, though. :) There is an extension that will do that. It's called FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension). You can backup everything about your profile. You can pick and choose what you want backed up and it will schedule backups also. It will backup your extensions as an XPI file so you can install them later. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=febe&cat=all

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the general consensus is here: If you don't like it, don't use it.

I mean, some people enjoy browsers that run like shit, cant render pages by the standards and have more (security)holes than Swiss cheese. But, for the rest of us, Firefox FTW.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[nuzak]

Make npitunes.dll a zero-length file and make it not writable.

Me, I just stopped using iTunes. Still need to strip the DRM out of my existing library, but QuickTime and iTunes are never touching my system again.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[skiffles]

Firefox USE to be a better user experience than IE. I can't say that anymore and it stinks that I can't. I want my Firefox browser back! You can always do like me and just not upgrade. All I've found was annoyances when I tried out RC1, I don't plan on even bothering with any newer versions.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Omestes]

5 tabs open, using RC2: 102,772k on Vista (I know... I know...)

Its been open for about 3.5 hours, and I have been opening and closing tabs, using gmail and various other "interactive elements", I'm using 7 extensions. On minimize it reduces use to around 93,000k, and slowly rebounds over the course of a few minutes to slightly below the original usage.

FF2 used about 2x that for the same use pattern, with minimal benefits from minimizing. Though I have gotten FF2 to approach a gig before with some heavy usage of flash, ajax, and other "web app" platforms.

I would say that this is an improvement.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

It always fucking amazes me how irrational supposedly technically inclined and enlightened /. users are so quick to dismiss someone as a troll.

1. What do I mean? I mean every fucking time I upgrade firefox I lose an extension or 2 until they're updated to be compatible. That's what I mean. For example Downthemall is always breaking. Hell at one point the Javascript debugger was broken (around the time 2.0 was released) until someone hacked the extension to make it work. At least the web developer extension which I tend to rely on tends to be updated quickly.

2. I have a PC in my lounge room that I foolishly forgot to turn auto updates off on. Now despite turning off auto update instead of going to my default home page it keeps trying to get me to update to Firefox 2. If by "I haven't seen it" you mean I must be lieing fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

3. Idiot and troll. How the fuck is this insightful? You're just plain wrong. Oldbar gives you the same look as the old toolbar but it still searches through bookmarks. Before I take my bookmarks to work I have to worry if it's something I want my boss seeing if I type it into the address bar. No, that doesn't just apply to porn which I've never felt the need to bookmark. A bookmark to a discussion on the pirate bay wouldn't be an appropriate thing to take, and there are a variety of social networking sites that are blocked at work. It's a privacy thing. You remember privacy? The thing /. seems to be up in arms about every 5 minutes.

4. Every fucking release I hear the memory management bugs are fixed. Every fucking release some holier than thou asshole like you tells me it's fixed the issue on their system. Frankly I don't care. I'm tired of worrying about whether this app will hog memory. I shouldn't need to worry about it. It shouldn't be an ongoing issue.

5. Every browser window that has multiple tabs pops up a confirmation. I might have anything from 3 to 15 windows since I logically group my google searches, one per browser window. It would be nice to have a way of saying close all tabs on all 15 windows. My current solution is to simply kill firefox from task manager.

6. If the extension is broken on the new version of Firefox, you either download a new version (if one is even available) or lose the functionality. What's hard to understand about this.

Grow the fuck up and stop being defensive about Firefox. If you're happy with it I'm thrilled for you. For me the pinnacle was version 1.0. Since then it's gotten worse and worse and given me nothing but headaches.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

What's your solution here?

A little thing called backward compatibility. That means you add new features but don't break existing ones.

See, there's this great new search engine called Google.com, and if you go there and type "Firefox 3 disable awesomebar", the very first link describes exactly how to do that.

Another idiot that insists I'm a troll without doing their homework. Oldbar does not restore old functionality. It simply makes awesomebar look like the old toolbar. However when you start typing a URL it still pulls things up from your bookmarks, and the firefox devs have no intention of changing how the search behaves. I don't want my bookmarks displayed to all and sundry when I simply type a URL into the search bar. They don't need to get glimpses of my political views, or what torrent sites I use!

OK, now it's painfully obvious you're either a troll or haven't been paying attention at all. Every Firefox 3 article I've read since the betas started coming out gushed over how memory management was so much better than in 2, how faster it is, etc

Okay now it's painfully obvious you're either a fanboi or haven't been paying attention at all. This happened when version 2 was released as well and it didn't fix things. It just took months for people to prove there was still a problem.

I can't even parse this one. You leave the tab-close confirmation on, but don't want it to confirm when you close tabs?

I'm glad you're not my parser then. I open 15 windows and more than one tab on each. Now to exit firefox, when I click close tabs on each one. There is no way to confirm I wish to close tabs on all windows. What's so fucking hard to parse?

Right-click, Save Link As...

Doesn't always work, and then how do I install the saved link. Create a HTML page to download it back from?

And how does drivel like this get modded "Insightful"?!

It got modded -1 troll actually. One person had the fucking sense to mod it insightful because obviously they've had the same experience. Yours remains at +4 informative despite the fact that you can't "parse" shit, and that you don't know how fucking oldbar works (but are happy to assume I've never come across it). You're the troll buddy.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

Could you give the URL of a page that refreshes itself and causes Firefox to use more and more memory?

Try:

http://www.smh.com.au/

I haven't done any testing to isolate which pages, but I think that's the most likely culprit.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

Actually there is; when you close, you just click the check mark that says "Do not prompt me again when closing x or more tabs."

No, I want that prompt. I just don't want it once per browser window when I'm trying to exit. There should be another button that says "Yes for this window and all others" so I can exit easily.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

It's a beta/RC. You're supposed to be testing it, not using it for mission critical eBay auctions and suchlike
Everything on that list is true for version 2 as well.

Moaning fuckers.

Double dumb ass to you too fella.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[joeman3429]

Wait wait wait...wait. What are... windows?

I've never met someone who used more than one window with firefox before, interesting

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[joeman3429]

I just found adblock, right clicked on the big green button, saved the .xpi

then I double clicked on it, selected firefox from the list of applications (the default choice), told it to always open using firefox, and um, it installed.

I hope this simple, multi-second process isn't too complicated or grueling for you.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[joeman3429]

And opera's pretty spiffy too.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

I hope this simple, multi-second process isn't too complicated or grueling for you.

Are you always this goddamn condescending to end users?

I haven't tried saving and installing XPIs for some time, because some time ago when the firefox extensions website changed it became difficult to do so. You weren't given the opportunity to right click and save as because a CGI script was serving the files and if you right clicked you'd just get the CGI script.

Regardless of your rudeness thanks for addressing one of my concerns. It's a pity that if I save the extensions I'm going to have to save them along with the browser version, because chances are if I download a new browser that version of the extension will no longer work.

If you can't see why I consider these things a PITA, or why an end user who's not an IT hobbiest or IT trained would find them annoying, there's nothing I'm going to be able to do in the course of one thread on /. to educate you.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

I've never met someone who used more than one window with firefox before, interesting

From an organizational point of view, what I'm doing makes perfect sense.

I usually use windows to group my searches. For example I open a window on a newspaper web site, then open each article in a separate frame. Then I want to look at a website on weather, so I open a new window and anything related to that goes in frames on that window. Then might I open slashdot in a new window and each story I open in a separate frame on that window. I typically don't read everything at once. I look back at stuff in between doing other things, so I don't close these windows for some time. By the middle of the day I might have 7 windows each with between 1 and 10 frames. By this stage Firefox is using up half the memory on my machine. (Some of the websites have web pages that refresh themselves periodically). I wish I could just close down some of the windows and get my memory back to normal but that doesn't work. So I end up wanting to shut down Firefox to free the memory up. Now I get a half a dozen confirmation boxes, one per window. I'd just like to be able to say yes I'm exiting all thanks, with a single confirmation. No such option exists. Out to the task manager I go and kill it. Since sessions are now saved I can reopen everything in one hit, but that'll cause immediate memory issues so I don't restore the session.

Also I don't shut my computer down at the end of the day (and even if I had to I'd hibernate). I see now reason why my browser session should turn into a slow memory hogging pain in the rear that I have to kill.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[joeman3429]

Not usually. I'd never thought about me not being an end user before. I guess I was only condescending because it seems like you complain and rant a lot without finding some of the obvious solutions. I apologize though.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[msuarezalvarez]

I'm sorry, but you are in no position of demanding anything.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Anonymous Coward]

That no longer works. FF developers in their infinite wisdom removed browser.urlbar.richResults from about:config.

You can install "old bar" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[syousef]

Thanks for the apology. I complain and rant because Firefox is one of about 3 applications that I still use that REGULARLY give me trouble. (The other 2 are development tools and I have no option).

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[joeman3429]

When I used FF2 I would close it from the manager every single time just because it would save the sessions because it thought it was crashing. Ah, good times. Your method does make sense. I do then same thing but without new windows so I get 30 tabs open and sift through them all.

it almost sounds like you just have too many things open at once. Even with FF3's better memory handling, it would still eat up all your ram

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[jc42]

Now, again, if you see any memory problem, you'll have to be specific about what it is. The rest of us don't see it. It's not "denial," it's just the truth.

OK, so suppose I'm in a typical state of having, say, 5 windows with 23 tabs open. I notice that when I'm not doing anything, just sitting there looking at a page, my top command or Activity Monitor window or whatever shows that firefox's memory is slowly growing. What tools are available that will tell me which of those 23 URLs is the one causing the problem?

I have occasionally used the technique of closing tabs one at a time, and waiting for the process-monitoring software to stabilize. But this takes a very long time, and usually doesn't even work. In some cases, I've reached the point of closing all tabs, FF has no windows at all open, and its memory usage is still slowly growing.

How do I identify the problem in such cases? I don't have a clue. That's why I've also generally given up trying to report them. As a programmer with a few decades experience, I pretty much understand what's needed for a bug report to be useful. I don't find very many cases with FF where I can present what I'd consider to be useful evidence if it were sent to me.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[jc42]

http://www.smh.com.au/

Just for yuks, I opened that in a new window. I was reading /. with SeaMonkey, so that's the browser I used. This was on my Mac Powerbook, SM 1.1.9. I had an Activity Monitory window open to the side. Over about three minutes I watched as SM's memory grew slowly by around 15 MB (RSIZE) and 35 MB (VSIZE). Its CPU usage fluctuated between 12% and 31%.

Finally, satisfied that this indeed looked like a case of slowly-growing memory use while "idle", I killed the window. CPU use dropped to around 5%, and memory use dropped. The RSIZE went back to about 95 MB, which it was before the test. The VSIZE dropped to 363 MB, which was about 10 MB more than it was before the test. So that URL apparently caused a permanent increase of about 10 MB in SeaMonkey's VSIZE.

I haven't tried the test with FF3.

With FF2, I've seen some pages that result in the VSIZE increasing by over 50 MB per minute, eventually reaching a VSIZE of several GB, at which point I kill it because all apps have slowed to a crawl. But usually by that time, I can't identify the offending URL, because I can no longer close tabs in FF, or do anything else with it.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[kbrosnan]

For current versions http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ and if you really need something pre 2.0 then use ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[bunratty]

Some great philosopher once succinctly summed your situation up in a few choice words: "Shit happens".

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[jc42]

I've never met someone who used more than one window with firefox before, interesting
From an organizational point of view, what I'm doing makes perfect sense.

And it makes sense for those of us who aren't organized. ;-)

One reason I use both multiple windows and tabs is that there are a lot of sites that like to force their pages to be some specific width. Different sites rarely agree on this width, but it's common for related pages on a site to all be forced to the same width. So a set of tabs open to a single site works well. You can size the window for one tab, and it'll be a good size for the rest.

But if you have a window with tabs open to different sites, switching tabs means that you have to repeatedly resize the window, or do a lot of horizonal scrolling. This makes for slow, frustrating use of the group of tabs, and you're better off with multiple windows.

Among my daily reading is a collection of online comics. I have a set of tabs that are mostly on gocomics.com, for instance, and once I size the window for the first comic, it works for the rest. But there are a few on other sites that require a much larger window, so they're in a different set. I also have a number of sets of tabs for news sites, and they're similarly grouped by size. I'd much prefer to group them by topic. But the sites' owners, in their wisdom, make this difficult to use by forcing different widths than their competitors.

What I'd really like is a way to tell the browsers to ignore width= attributes, at least for some sites. But if any browsers have such a feature, I've never been able to find it.

It's especially annoying that slashdot forces a minimal width. I have images turned off and AdBlock cuts out most of the ads that get through. The result is a nearly text-only page, for which there's no sensible reason to force it to a width too wide for a small screen and different from other news sites. But /. has followed this common anti-reader practice. So I read /. in a separate window, with discussion and reply windows in tabs.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Malc]

Can I assume then that you're finally accepting that there are serious memory leaks in Mozilla?

Shit doesn't just happen with software. Bad programming happens. Bad design happens. Bad attitudes happen. If somebody on my team espouses that attitude, I starting working on moving them off the team. They're not wanted.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Malc]

Same experience for me. I graduated in 1996 and have been working as a software engineer, team lead and engineering manager ever since. I had programming experience as a hobby for more than 10 years before that. It's not something I have the time nor patience to debug - I don't care if FF is open source, it might as well be closed-source commercial software from my perspective. Nor is there a simple test case to reproduce the issue, but suffice it to say I've seen it over many years over many installations on my several OSes, with and without extensions installed. Dunno how many people have to chime in and say there's a problem before the Mozilla devs pay attention. If I were on the project my team would be running it in a profiler until it's resolved.

Re:Firefox is starting to give me the shits

[Malc]

When I say team lead, it's actual a tech lead position: I R&D, prototype, architect and do the code reviews for our engineers who are spread between Europe, US and China, and if I have time I contribute code to tasks on a project's critical path. I think this means my opinion and experience counts for something when I comment on this issue.

This, my friends, is...

[sheepoo]

an incomplete article!

Tab Mix Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Until I can get a stable version of Tab Mix Plus, I'm sticking with FF2.

ext3 system freeze bug fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

RC2 fixes the really annoying bug 421482 (Firefox 3 uses fsync excessively) which however is arguably not Firefox 3's fault.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

But can it...

[camperdave]

One of the features I'd like to see in Firefox is the ability to "tear off" a tab into a new window. My surfing experience is something like this. It would be nice to be able to right click on a tab, and convert it to a new browser window.

Re:But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ctrl+(L, C, N, V)
Enter

Re:But can it...

[frooddude]

Tab Mix Plus is your answer... Duplicate in New window and Move to New window are menu items that can be added to tab context, and main context menus.

Re:But can it...

[JustinOpinion]

Good trick.

Note that in Firefox 3 you can drag tabs between Windows. So you can create a new Window and toss the tab you want into it.

You can also right-click on links and go "Open Link in New Window".

There are lots of tab-managing add-ons, and I think some of them allow you to open a tab as a new window. (E.g. this one, although it hasn't been updated to FF3 yet... or this one.)

Re:But can it...

[camperdave]

Ctrl+(L, C, N, V)
Enter

Nice try. (It doesn't work if your home page has an entry field on it (like google), but an extra ^L before the final ^V will fix that.)

So now all you have to do is tell me how to put that (and the command to close the tab) on the right click menu.

Re:But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

ditto. I do this manually but copy/pasting from the address bar, but that isn't good if I am in the middle of a form or something.

Re:But can it...

[Abcd1234]

And have it not lose your place in the page.

Re:But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera does this without even having to reload the page.

Re:But can it...

[HalifaxRage]

Wtf. How did I not know about this?

Re:But can it...

[pablomme]

More GUI-oriented:

* View > Toolbars > Customise
* Drag the "Open new window" icon to your toolbar

Now you can drag a tab or the current page's favicon into the button to open it in a new window. Also works for text URLs. It shares some limitations with the keyboard trick though, in that it leaves the tab open.

Re:But can it...

[thebonafortuna]

Hopefully it gets updated soon, because I'm hurting without it.

Re:But can it...

[dnwq]

There's a beta version of TMP that works with FF3RC2. Check the forum thread.

Re:But can it...

[hansamurai]

I've been using Tab Mix Plus (version from forum) with RC1 and it works great.

Re:But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrade to IE7. Ctrl-N.

Re:But can it...

[thebonafortuna]

Thanks! Will definitely look into now.

Re:But can it...

[thebonafortuna]

Thanks!

Re:But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple:
hold CTRL and press:
LXNLV

C-L,C-X,C-N,C-L,C-V

Re:But can it...

[Trogre]

Konqueror and the Konsole has this. Right-click on a Tab, click 'Detach' and voila.

I wish, oh I wish, firefox had this feature. I tend to like having one window per 'topic' I'm working on, so if a link leads to a new area of research, I'll naturally want to detach it to a new window.

It's more likely than you think

[tepples]

weasels in my trousers [...] eels in my hovercraft [...] embarrassing mistakes in my post It's more likely than you think.

I hope I don't have any

[russlar]

I hope I don't have any Well, it looks like you did.

Only probelm so far...

[Idbar]

is the Windows Media Player plug-in for Windows Vista. It doesn't seem to be working for me. (Well, besides of the regular constantly growing memory problem).

Re:Only probelm so far...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just the FF developers trying to get you to stop watching porn.

Re:Only probelm so far...

[kbrosnan]

WMP 11 plugin for Firefox http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx

Re:Only probelm so far...

[Idbar]

Yes, that worked fine on my XP PC, but for some reason keeps complaining that I'm missing it when I tried to install it on the Vista PC.

Re:Only probelm so far...

[Idbar]

Turns out that "repairing" wasn't never the option. I had to uninstall it and install it again, and it works now. Thanks! Knowing that it probably should work, made me try again.

wait

[p51d007]

I ran the RC1 in sandboxie, and yep, the extensions are "broken". I have too much time invested in setting up, tweaking etc. Hat's off to you guys who run these betas/RC's. I'll wait a few days after the "final" is released.

ooh-ooh-ooh where is my individual tab threading??

[distantbody]

Having one hung tab make the others unusable is not cool, in addition ive encountered a few infinite 'yes-no dialogue' loops attacks that force you to either select 'yes', or force quite-- an attack vector that shouldn't have gone past v0.1a IMO.

Silverlight?

[leuk_he]

Does silverlight work in this new version?

I cannot tell since google point to old topics and rc2 "release notes" are the ff3 release notes and not rc1-> rc2 release notes.

PLUGIN AUTHORS Listen up!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if the plugin authors would get on the bandwagon and update their own code, so many of us can upgrade to 3.x. Hint hint.

It's a mad lib!

[steelfood]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any cooties.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any grues.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any women to nag at me.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any pizza that's been sitting in the fridge for more than a month.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any other nerds squatting in mom's my basement.

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any comments that stop in the middle of a sentence on the front page of slashdot.

Re:It's a mad lib!

[cp.tar]

I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any women to nag at me.

Slashdot to steelfood: do try to pay attention. Where would a Slashdotter find a woman?

Hope you don't have any.

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the sad looking mug on your wife, Malda, yeah...I can understand why you would hope that.

Acid3

[jbeaupre]

Still only getting 71 on the Acid3 test (your mileage may vary). As this is the RC, that's probably where it'll stick for the foreseeable future.

Re:Acid3

[tobiasly]

Still only getting 71 on the Acid3 test (your mileage may vary). As this is the RC, that's probably where it'll stick for the foreseeable future.

Correct, it has been in feature freeze for quite a while and no more changes will be made to the rendering engine.

Re:Acid3

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari lacks the great plugins but http://nightly.webkit.org/ builds of Webkit have had it passing the Acid3 test 100% lately and blowing away other browsers in the SunSpider Javascript benchmark too. It's been getting faster almost daily. I'm on OS X Intel.
I normally use Firefox 2 because of the plugins, frustrasted with 3rc1 and rc2 breaking adblock. At least NoScript still works.

Re:Acid3

[pdusen]

Adblock was never broken in RC1 or RC2. I updated to both the day of.

Re:Acid3

[Anonymous Coward]

Still only getting 71 on the Acid3 test (your mileage may vary). As this is the RC, that's probably where it'll stick for the foreseeable future.

Correct, it has been in feature freeze for quite a while and no more changes will be made to the rendering engine.

Nightlies of Firefox 3.1 are starting to gain on that test. It's planned to be released by the end of the year.

Image scaling, finally!

[PhotoGuy]

One feature I haven't seen any release notes or anyone else talk about, is true scaling of web pages. It always amazed me that in this day and age, that the Alt-plus and Alt-minus zoom only scaled the text, not the graphics. Not terribly useful for zooming in on a page, or seeing more of a page by zooming out. Opera has had this for ages (from the start?), and it's not as though scaling images is processor intensive (I've written blinding fast C code to do this, with smoothing, myself in the past).

Glad to see this is finally in Firefox. Hopefully they've fixed a couple of other annoyances I've seen; the random refusal to load pages (that load after a restart, or in other browsers), and the failure of Alt-F search to find things that I can see right in front of me on the page.

Re:Image scaling, finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now to implement proper filtering on the images when they scale them...

Re:Image scaling, finally!

[CopaceticOpus]

I've seen IE do this, and the zoomed images often look really ugly. Unless you're on a mobile device or a tiny screen, there shouldn't be any reason that images need to be zoomed. Nearly every website fits on a 1024x768 display. On the other hand, scaling just the text can be very helpful for readability.

I don't really mind the zooming option, so long as the text scaling option doesn't get lost.

Re:Image scaling, finally!

[starwed]

I completely agree. The only prefs I change in FF3 are those for zoom. If I zoom in, it's typically because I can't read the text... so I'd prefer it if only the text size changed.

I just wish it was smart enough to realize that, even if I have "Zoom Text Only" selected, I want full-zoom when viewing a single image file.

Re:Image scaling, finally!

[prockcore]

They do already.

ff3 properly averages pixels when you scale.

Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace removed?

[screevo]

When I middle click on a folder full of bookmarks, I want it to replace the existing tabs. This is a feature that, in Firefox 2, could be turned on and off. Unfortunately, too many people whined and moaned about not wanting to change a preference. So do they just default it the other way? NO! They strip out the functionality entirely.

Yes, it still exists in about:config. But, the various bug reports on the subject state quite clearly, the functionality is gone.

How much trouble could it have been to leave that feature in place for those of us that use it? I browse by folders, not by individual pages. This means that I'm either going to have to stick with Firefox 2 and hope they continue updating it even after the release of 3, or I'll need to find a new browser.

"I Hope I Don't Have Any"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

...unfinished sentences?

Re:"I Hope I Don't Have Any"

[Bertie]

I think it was his little joke, Jerry.

Re:"I Hope I Don't Have Any"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Bertie? Like "Wooster"?

Re:"I Hope I Don't Have Any"

[Anonymous Coward]

...Jeeves.

Re:"I Hope I Don't Have Any"

[Bertie]

Neither as posh nor as funny. But vastly better in bed. Oh yes.

I hear you, and it hurts my ears

[slyborg]

OMG. I feel your pain, and I don't want to.

You need to STOP USING FIREFOX 3.0 IMMEDIATELY. Anything that causes you this much angst cannot be good for your blood pressure. I urge you, for the sake of your health, to immediately downgrade to Firefox 1.0 (or perhaps Netscape 3.0 would be even better), which should return you to those Good Old Days of yore that you apparently yearn for so intensely.

Re:I hear you, and it hurts my ears

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, he's not even reading this anymore. There's actually answers here, so he ran off before his blood pressure could drop and he stopped being Angry(tm). So let's just mess with his head now.

- New versions break older extensions. Until the extension is updated, bye bye extension. I don't enjoy that hassle and it makes me think twice about upgrading. This is fixed in the latest Netscape 3.0 release. They did away with the extension system there, so now everything depends on QuickTime plugins.

- Old versions constantly redirect to a page suggesting you upgrade. I don't want my software to nag me into submission thanks. I don't need to be babysat. Again, Netscape 3.0. It hasn't bugged me to upgrade yet, which is why I've kept on steadfastly using it since the dot-com era! I just wish web designers would stop using this nonstandard "CSS" nonsense. That'll never catch on.

- New versions force you to use new features without providing functionality to back it out even when the user wants it. Eg. The new supercoolsearchbar garbage. I don't want my browser looking though my bookmarks when I type a URL but I don't mind it searching history that clears itself regularly. Hm... you do have a good point. Functionality should never be added to a product. Why, just the other day I was grumbling over the concept of adding additional headers to the HTTP 1.0 specification. The GET statement should be enough for anyone, and besides, these newfangled options just slow down the servers anyway.

But to answer your question, I'd start with throwing pretzels at the computer. Usually works for the TV.

- Firefox is the one application i use regularly that I find myself killing using task manager regularly. It either hangs or hogs memory which is only released by restarting. Don't deny or try to explain in excruciating technical detail why the browser slowly saps all your memory if left on a page that refreshes itself regularly. It's a bug. Deal with it. Fix it. Even refuse to fix it. But stop denying there are memory management issues. (sorry, can't answer this one, you've already gone judge, jury, tester, developer, and executioner on it, so I can't possibly respond to your well-thought out angst)

- There's no graceful way to exit that doesn't pop up a thousand confirmations if you do keep the close tab confirmation active. Have you even TRIED ripping the cords out of your computer and throwing it out a window? Dude, if you've ever seen how those things tumble from five stories up, you'd never think that wasn't graceful. It also has a nice side effect of removing the confirmation popups. You know, the ones with the checkbox in them to remove them later? Sure, those work, per se, but it's nowhere near as graceful as a tumbling block of metal and plastic majestically falling towards the city street.

- I can't download and keep my extensions for future install. I really don't like using up bandwidth downloading the same extensions each time I install Firefox. This is a known problem with users on 2400 baud modems, the extensions DO hog up literally kilobytes of disk space and bandwidth. However, the Mozilla team, with their spiffy new 28.8k modems, are stuck in their own ivory tower of internet speed and have provided no way to save extensions for the future. In fact, if your mouse still has a right button or your keyboard still has an "Option" key on it, they'll be on their way over to remove either or both to enforce their worldview of never being able to see the context menu and the Save Link As... option. Just wait by the door.

Firefox USE to be a better user experience than IE. I can't say that anymore and it stinks that I can't. I want my Firefox browser back! This part still makes me laugh. Sorry, but you let slip your marketing department brand specificness ("I want my Firefox web interfacing and browsing tool back!"). Ruined an otherwise perfectly good drama queening. *sigh*

Mod parent up!

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Ah yes, this computer is missing most of the web feeds (where I'd usually find The Burning Edge) I used to have with my old PC. I'm hoping I'll have those back by next week, my Mozilla feeds included.

Theres a difference between..

[Viol8]

.. a bug fix not making a release and sitting on a major bug for *4 YEARS*

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Anonymous Coward]

Major?! It's for PAC files. Nobody uses PAC files. Quick show of hands, who knows what a PAC file is? Anybody? No?

It's a Proxy Auto Config file, for those rare occasions when you can't just type in the proxy name and be done with it. The only time it's useful is when your network admins are just plain old too stupid to set up a proxy server with a single DNS name and need to have your client figure out which one to ask based on address. Otherwise it's useless and shouldn't ever be needed.

Major bug my ass.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Viol8]

Every large corporations uses a PAC files you idiot. Where do you work , on the checkout at Walmart?

Re:Theres a difference between..

[bunratty]

Let me explain again:
a) They did not "sit on" the bug. They tried to fix it. The patch did not make the release because it caused a regression.
b) Name any major open source package with an open bug database that has been around for ten years, and I can point to a "major bug" that has remained unfixed for four years. That doesn't mean developers don't care. That just means that large projects ship with major bugs. That's just a fact of life for software engineering. You can delay release until every single "major bug" is fixed, or nothing would ever ship.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Anonymous Coward]

Then your company's IT department is made up of drooling morons. There's no excuse for using a PAC file unless your IT department is completely incompetent.

Want to change the proxy used based on the location of the client? Great! Look up how Akamai does it: creative DNS and routing. No client interaction required.

Either use intelligent DNS to pick the correct proxy server, or using routing magic to route the IP to the right proxy server. Both require no end-user interaction and don't require a PAC file.

Which is a good thing, because quite a lot of software out there doesn't support PAC files. Like, for example, pretty much everything that isn't a web browser and wants to access things through the web.

Get a better IT department.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[RobBebop]

I am reminded of a quote about how software development differs from more traditional mechanical methods.

"Hardware systems eventually fail. Software systems eventually work."

Eventually, the last major bug in Firefox will be fixed and the developers will get to move onto something new. At that point, computers will have evolved to the point where "building web browsers" is as obsolete as "building file systems" is today.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know about this bug, but it does explain why FF is so slow for me, sometimes.

I use a local .pac file to determine which proxy server to use to access TOR, depending on the network my laptop is on. I use TOR for googling, and along with selected FF extensions and settings they pretty much can't trend on me.

I also like to consume plants that are illegal where I am, so it is best that when communicating over the internet about these plants I can do so anonymously, and I use TOR for this.

You are right to a degree, pac files aren't the nicest way to manage proxys, but in most controlled corporate environment it doesn't matter if the clients choose the proxy or the servers do.

But either way, the bug shouldn't be outstanding for so long. PAC files must be reasonably widely used, else the feature would have been pulled from FF.... so they should get it working properly before adding things like the awful bar.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't YOU fix it if you feel it is that important. Provide a fix that doesn't break other shit. Otherwise, STFU.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Krakhan]

And that's why nobody is making new file systems today, right? Oh wait...

Re:Theres a difference between..

[RobBebop]

The only semi-recent stories I recall that were tangentially related to file system development in the last 5 years was about a certain murder trial.

I am actually quite happy with ext3 on systems that I get to control, and that was introduced in 2001.

Now, I am sure that somewhere there is development/improvement going into the design of file systems. It wasn't my point to argue against that. It was my point to highlight the fact that eventually software becomes stable enough that it no longer requires hundreds of developers to tweak/maintain it. As it stands, I wouldn't be surprised if IE/Firefox/Safari each have that many people working on them. Whereas, I bet there are less than 100 full time people working on file system software projects these days.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Logic and Reason]

The only semi-recent stories I recall that were tangentially related to file system development in the last 5 years was about a certain murder trial. Then you haven't been paying attention: ZFS was released less than five years ago, and it's been pretty big news in the filesystems world.

Re:Theres a difference between..

[Trogre]

I don't believe this. I'm guessing you haven't been about many big companies, but a lot of them are divided into subdivisions.

Subdivisions with IT departments who have no control over the corporate DNS or DHCP servers but still need to administer local proxy servers and browsers. Perhaps the *upstream* IT department is retarded for implementing such policies, but that's reality I'm afraid. And that, sir, is why we need .PAC files.

You got a better way of handling these situations? Please, I'm all ears.

Slashdot "editors" = poorly-written scripts

[Anonymous Coward]

After years of reading Slashdot, this is the only logical conclusion as to how an "editor" could be so profoundly inept at actually editing.

BTW, now that Obama is the Democratic nominee, the oceans have stopped rising and the Earth can finally begin to heal. Holy shit, this guy really does have a Jesus complex! I've never heard such hyperbole!

Announcement

[spartas]

The announcement clearly states not to link to the download page. Link to the announcement page instead, as the download page will change.

Re:ooh-ooh-ooh where is my individual tab threadin

[Azghoul]

Solution: Stop surfing porn sites. Duh. :)

FireFox killed my father!

[blueapples]

You insensitive

084|\/|4

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm more interested in the 084|\/|4 changeset, sure it's as over-rated as the iSpoon and probably won't ever even make it into an actual product release, but damned if it doesn't sound so radiant! omg,a pony!

Re:ooh-ooh-ooh where is my individual tab threadin

[Anonymous Coward]

Or get a decent browser.

May I suggest IE or Opera?

What's new since RC1?

[pelago]

The release notes don't say what's new since RC1. Does anyone know?

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[StarHeart]

I feel you. That kind of issue of someone else's bug fix has screws with how I like things has been happening more and more lately. I have had it twice with metacity, the Gnome window manager. The first time for grabbing a window and dragging it to another workspace by hotkey. The second with how metacity auto places new windows on multiple monitor setups.

Could It Be TabMixPlus?

[Keeper Of Keys]

Although Firefox 3 is without a doubt more.. argh, I'm actually going to write it... performant than FF2, I'm seeing high memory usage too. I strongly suspect the TabMixPlus extension, without which life would scarcely be worth living. Are you another TMP adict, Lumpy?

Re:Could It Be TabMixPlus?

[barzok]

I'm not running TMP as the tab-management features of FF2 and 3 have been enough to keep me happy. I used TMP in earlier releases to make up for deficiencies there.

GramerBlock

[Keeper Of Keys]

My final secret little dream addon is a grammar addon, oh how the net could be a better place ;) Nice idea. It could work like AdBlock and unobtrusively remove all ungrammatical content from every page.

Re:GramerBlock

[Jellybob]

That ones easy - just add this to your user stylesheet:
ul#commentListing { display: none; }

ffox3

[Anonymous Coward]

looks different.
hmm...

the point of release candidates ..

[rs232]

"One interesting thing I've found talking to average Joe (who doesn't have any personal agenda to fulfil as to whether they use IE or Firefox) is that they find all this Firefox publicity as vain"

I've never come across an average Joe that has even heard of a 'release candidate', never mind knowing what one is. I don't believe they are aimed at the average Joe, unless you know different. People would be off directing them to the current stable release. I mean without 'release candidates', Mozilla would they get less user feedback and retard the development of Firefox ..

"Release candidates are development packages released to check if any critical problems have slipped into the code during the previous development period"

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[screevo]

I know it's cliche, but "It's not a bug, it's a feature." For once, it really is. I'll seek out an extension that fixes it, because I do definitely want an improved rendering engine.

Re:ooh-ooh-ooh where is my individual tab threadin

[ditoa]

The infinite popups thing can be resolved by using a system utility such as the AceHelper plugin for Total Commander to disable the javascript window popup, then close the tab and just click ok to close that single javascript popup window, as the tab is dead it doesn't loop again.

I agree this feature should really be available in Firefox but as it isn't I thought I would mention this as it has saved my session after stupidly clicking a link on Digg without reading it 100%

You latecomers with your downgrade browsers

[David Gerard]

I'm already on Minefield 3.1a1pre :-D

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[msuarezalvarez]

The bane of your desktop is your inability to pick a window manager which suits your preferences and ideas regarding window management. It's not like there is not choice... (And Havoc is one of the people you have to thank for the existing interoperability which makes that choice possible!)

Shared bookmarks between windows and linux

[ck_808]

I used to be able to set the bookmarks.html file location in firefox 2. it seems this functionality doesn't exist for the places.sqlite file.
Does anybody have any idea how to share and modify bookmarks between a windows and linux install in Firefox 3 ?

I've tried sharing profiles and places.sqlite between the OS's. Best case i can get is view but can't add any bookmarks in Linux.

Re:Shared bookmarks between windows and linux

[SolidGold]

Try the foxmarks plugin.

Re:Shared bookmarks between windows and linux

[ck_808]

Try the foxmarks plugin. I've had a look at this but its not exactly what I'm looking for.
I should have added, without using an extension which uses third party servers to store the bookmarks :)

This feels like a regression that isn't going to get fixed for a long time or at all. Maybe I need to start looking at Opera or something.

One of the first tests that failed was ...

[jc42]

They still don't have a fast way, when looking at the bookmarks, to point at a folder and "open all in new window". I have about a dozen browsers on my Mac (Isn't web testing fun?), and FF seems to be the only browser that lacks this handy gimmick. Instead, what you have to do is find another FF window, bring it to the foreground, and (on the Mac) type CMD-N, which opens a new window. Then you move back to the mouse, move the pointer back to the bookmarks window, click on it, CMD-click to get the menu, and finally you can "Open All in Tabs".

This clumsy series of actions to do something so simple is my favorite example to explain to people why I think the FF gang isn't particularly concerned with giving users a good UI. In general, FF seems to have evolved its UI to require many more actions to do common things than most other browsers now require.

And AdBlock doesn't load. If this gets annoying enough, I may go back to version 2. OTOH, NoScript seems to work fine, and it successfully blocks most of the active garbage in ads, so it may be acceptable. I'll play with it and see.

(One silly question: Why is the bookmarks window now labelled "Library"? Well, maybe it'll make more sense after I play with it for a while. For now, it's just one more inexplicable change that seems to do nothing but add to what I need to remember when I'm testing pages against multiple browsers.

Re:One of the first tests that failed was ...

[prockcore]

Right click on the folder, hold down Shift, and select Open All in Tabs. It'll create a new window, and open all those bookmarks in tabs on that new window.

Re:One of the first tests that failed was ...

[jc42]

So what's this "right click" of which you speak?

My Mac Powerbook only has a single button under its trackpad.

(and I should add "you insensitive clod". ;-)

Actually, I should also download the new FF to my linux box. It has a 3-button mouse, and things often work a lot better there with that mouse.

But where is Google Browser Sync for FF3?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way I am upgrading without it. I am surprised it is not a standard feature with Firefox by now like Opera's own implementation of something similar has become.

Re:But where is Google Browser Sync for FF3?

[bonehead]

I agree. I've tried the betas and would love to be running them, but I've become way too dependent on google browser sync.

Before anyone chimes in and suggests foxmarks, it's not an adequate substitute. In addition to syncing bookmarks, I need to keep my sessions synced, too.

As much as I'm chomping at the bit to move to FF3, I'll unfortunately be sticking with FF2 until google browser sync gets updated, or a good substitute comes along.

Re:But where is Google Browser Sync for FF3?

[Omestes]

Is it just the version number thats broke, or does it just fail?

Re:But where is Google Browser Sync for FF3?

[bonehead]

Haven't tried it myself, but from every account I've read, it just fails. None of the usual tricks for getting old addons to run seem to work.

Strange behaviour

[Joker1980]

I've been running it all day and so far i like, it seems faster nothing has broken (well one extension but im used to that by now). However whenever i right click on a link FF3 seems to guess what i want, no lil menu just randomly tries to save the link or print it or email it or whatever other function it takes a fancy to. Its all very bizzare.

Grr. Auto-complete "fixed"

[edxwelch]

One of the more annoying HTML features is the auto-complete = off parameter. It allows moron webmasters to disable your password manager.
Other browsers like Opera, correctly ignore the tag and let the user decide. (Really this is in the same class as the blink tag and pop-ups)
There was a script that you run to tempory disable the tag, but now becuase of a "bug fix" in the latest firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362576), this hack is no longer effective. Thanks Mozilla

Safari

[ProfessionalCookie]

I just tried that in Safari and it worked. In fact it worked by zoom fading the tab into a thumbnail that grew to the parent window size on mouse up. Wow.

Scared me so bad I cmd-w closed it without thinking! Context menu on a tab reveals "Move Tab to New Window." I can see how this would be handy- especially if you wanted to change views to view entabbed pages simultaneously. Maybe a FF extension is out? Anyone?

Memory Issues

[Enderandrew]

Every single time there is a post about Firefox on Slashdot, someone whines about how Mozilla refuses to address memory issues.

1 - Firefox 3 uses far less memory than Firefox 2.
2 - Most "memory leaks" come from poorly written extensions. Turn them all off and check out the difference.
3 - The biggest reason Firefox starts using a slew of memory after a bunch of browsing isn't a bug, but literaly a feature. It keeps fully rendered versions of pages in memory, so when you hhit the Back button, it can pull them up quicker. You can disable this feature if you want.
4 - People have this misconception that they should never use their memory. Unused memory does you no good.
5 - Next time try Google before you post a stupid quesiton.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[StarHeart]

No, I have tried other window managers. The problem is the good one is no longer maintained, Sawfish. It did everything I wanted, but got replaced by metacity.

My latest attempt was XFCE4. Overall it isn't quite as polished as Gnome, but is usable. The problem is it has the same problem that metacity does in the latest versions, which was the whole reason I was looking at it in the first place. The issue is the putting windows on the same screen as the mouse cursor. For a twin view setup, it is a really stupid idea. I have two monitors, I open firefox and thunderbird at the same time. Why do I want them overlapping? It was changed in metacity for users who complained the old way didn't work well for projectors as the second monitor. I understand this situation, having experienced it once under Windows. The simple alternative would have been a preference, but Havoc hates preferences, hence he is a bane.

Other window managers don't work well for various reasons. They have vastly different concepts of window management, they are more of their own desktop environment, they don't integrate well with Gnome, etc. Overall my best choice is to revert to patches on metacity. I have been lucky in that the patch reversions have just worked for a long time.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[StarHeart]

In addition, the comment in my sig is more than just about metacity. Havoc was one of the architects of the whole dumbing down of Gnome. Gnome 1.x was way more usable and configurable than Gnome 2.x. The only two things Gnome 2.x had going for it after it came out was that it was the "future", and it was based on gtk2.

Holy off-topic, batman!

[Garganus]

The iBook G4 series didn't get drop sensors for HD park and the multi-touch, 'scrolling trackpad' features until the "Mid-2005" models (1.33 GHz, 12-inch and 1.42 GHz 14-inch) ...the very last iBooks before the series was discontinued.
Ref, everymac.com: http://tinyurl.com/4zx8x6

Home page has RC link...

[rklrkl]

Remember the good-old days when Mozilla (and Firefox) release notes actually talked about bugs fixed, features introduced, and interesting things? When each version actually informed you about what had changed? http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0rc2/releasenotes/ seems fairly reasonable to me. Granted, the differences between RC1 and RC2 aren't flagged (because virtually nothing but some blocker bugs were the changes between the two), but they *did* flag "Improved in Beta 5" in the equivalent Beta 5 release notes.

Going to mozilla.org (or .com) and trying to find betas is now impossible. No, really... there are no links to non-release versions. Oh come on! How hard did you bother reading the home page? What's New on the right hand side has a "Firefox 3 Sneak Peak" link for goodness' sake! And even if you drifted to mozilla.org's home page instead, guess what? Developer News on the right hand side announces the RC2 release as I speak. You sir, are either one lazy so-and-so or just a total troll!

I miss the time when Mozilla was a user-friendly organization, when everything was public and *easy to find*. I miss the time when people actually made the effort to check the current state of Web sites before slagging them off. Everything related to Mozilla (bar a few closed security bugs, which are opened once the fix is published) is very public and trivially easy to find. It's a shame that some people just don't think before they post.

Drawing bug in FF3 (and FF2) for Windows only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: The heights below are simply intended to simulate content (such as images or paragraphs).


<html>
<head>
<title>Firefox 3 RC2 drawing bug (affects FF2 also)</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Go to top of page, and refresh, and use 'Page Down' key (and not the scroll bar) to scroll to the bottom of the page.</h1>
<p>This affects Firefox 3 RC2 (and FF2), but only for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Scrolling via the mouse in this example can sometimes show the same problem behavior.</p>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1020px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1021px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1022px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1023px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1024px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1025px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1026px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1027px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1028px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1029px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1020px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1021px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1022px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1023px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1024px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1025px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1026px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1027px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1028px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1029px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1020px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1021px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1022px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1023px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1024px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1025px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1026px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1027px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1028px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1029px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1020px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1021px;"></div></div>
<div style="overflow: auto;"><div style="height: 1022px;"></div></div>
</body>
</html>


The heights were all 1024 in my original example, but I was forced to make them vary a little bit here to thwart Slashdot's "postercomment" compression filter.

I hope Mozilla fixes this one. The problem affects me. I submitted a bug report, but there doesn't seem to be much interest.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[msuarezalvarez]

The simple alternative would have been a preference, but Havoc hates preferences, hence he is a bane.

This is an absurd argument for calling him a `bane'. It was his window manager, it was him doing the all work so he was absolutely free to have it do whatever it pleased him, don't you think? Moreover, he provided you with enough freedom so that you could actually change whatever you wanted to change in the wm, and you seem to have done precisely that.

What is needed in order to not be a `bane': do whatever other people want?

Re:ooh-ooh-ooh where is my individual tab threadin

[mmortal03]

Check this bug report out, as I think it is the cause of the behavior that you (and I) have been experiencing: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435865

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[msuarezalvarez]

In addition, the comment in my sig is more than just about metacity. Havoc was one of the architects of the whole dumbing down of Gnome. Gnome 1.x was way more usable and configurable than Gnome 2.x. The only two things Gnome 2.x had going for it after it came out was that it was the "future", and it was based on gtk2.

But, in that case, it is not Havoc who's the `bane', but the whole of the GNOME community. It's not exactly him alone that did the change. Do you consider the rest of the GNOME developers just mindless drones that followed Havoc's orders? At most, what you can say is that `GNOME is the bane of your Linux desktop'.

Once you realize that, you have to ponder: why do you keep using GNOME? And: why do essentially all big distros use GNOME? Masochism? Or maybe those choices that turned GNOME into your `bane' where the correct ones for lots and lots of other people?

And, again, once you ask yourself that, you come to the following question: wasn't the GNOME community at complete liberty to choose its audience? If that community at some point chose to favour the part of the audience which does not think having more preferences is better, and unfocus the preference-hungry part of the audience, was it not their choice to make?

In the name of full-disclosure, I have to say that I took some part in that process which you call `dumbing down'...

candlejack tag

[ArtieP]

I was surprised not to see a candlejack tag on this summary. Hasn't anyone seen Freakazoid? I mean re

Gmail Problems?

[rebelcan]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else had problems with Gmail and the 'Newer Version' of their UI with RC1? Firefox 3 RC 1 would eat up all my avaliable CPU and about 400,000k of memory when ever I opened GMail. Switching to the 'Old Version' fixes it. Using XP, all the fun patches, same thing happens on several other computers here at work.

TabMixPlus not in FF3 (yet)

[Drenaran]

That would work great, except that TabMixPlus hasn't been ported/updated to Firefox 3 yet. It's pretty much the only reason I haven't made the switch yet.

On a side note; All-in-One Sidebar also hasn't been ported nor has Long Titles (for XKCD and the like), but I would consider those acceptable loses. Heck, if no one did Long Titles for too long I might even take a crack at it, wouldn't be the first time I'd patched up a (simple) extension.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[StarHeart]

It isn't exactly his window manager. He is an employee of Red Hat and codes it for them professionally. Which makes it more of a customer/vendor relationship than a user/programmer relationship.

Being reasonable, and be willing to add preferences for when in different situations need different behaviour, like said most every other program on the planet.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[StarHeart]

Yes, I agree I am singling out Havoc. There were others who I am sure helped in what I dislike about Gnome. He is just the most obvious and in my face.

Why do I keep using Gnome, because it is still the closest to what I want. As for the big distribution, probably because Gnome is better than KDE in general, and those are the big two that are fairly feature complete. Not to say KDE isn't way better in many ways, but overall I still prefer Gnome. No, they aren't the correct ones for lots and lots of people. An advanced button to show additional preferences wouldn't hurt every day users. The closest Gnome gets to that is gconf-editor, and even then most of the time things are still missing. Your logic is we should cater to the majority, screw everyone else.

Yes, in general they are free to do whatever. They are answerable to their boss, if they do it professional. To a certain extent the boss is answerable to the customer. On the other hand programmers don't live in a vacuum, they don't just write it for themselves, and other people do use it. It would be nice if they took more input. It would be more social, and less narrow minded.

I figured you were related in some way.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[msuarezalvarez]

I simply cannot understand where this feeling of entitlement you are evincing comes from, and in what way you justify it.

No one owes you anything.

Re:Why was browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace remov

[msuarezalvarez]

Your logic is we should cater to the majority, screw everyone else.

That is not my logic. My logic is, let everyone do what they think is best. I cannot believe you are suggesting otherwise.

Fake, haha

[Cynic.AU]

Haha guys, this is obviously fake. I'm using RC2 right now and nothing is amiss. I can post normally.. dunno what's going on with you guys, maybe Candlejack or something has-

Show windows and tabs from last time

[l0cust]

I have been running FF3 beta ever since it came out and been loving it with every new extension update, but the one major annoying thing which really ticks me off is that it doesn't open the last tabs and windows when ff is restarted.

Yes that option is checked in the drop down menu in options. No, I don't even get the "Are you sure you want to close x tabs" dialogue when I close the the browser. Yes, I have reinstalled countless times. Yes, I reported this bug the first time I saw it.

I would love to hear if anyone has a solution for this problem.