Firefox 3 Release On Tuesday

unkgoon writes "The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme." Dan100 also links to a full changelog from 9.27.

Comments

Opera 9.5 released today

[wile_e_wonka]

In other news, Opera 9.5, the other best browser, released today.

Re:Opera 9.5 released today

[Threni]

> Yes, but 9.5 > 3.0 release numbers don't mean much. Opera 9.5 is just as important release as Firefox 3.0 is.

Hardly. Firefox has larger market share, is more popular, has more add-ons, is supported more widely even by mainstream non-nerdy websites etc. I use Opera Mini on my phone nearly every day, largely because it's free but also because it's pretty good, but when I decided, years ago, to experiment with a non Internet Explorer browser, I discovered that Opera had ads all over it, and to get rid of them I had to pay. I googled for another one and within seconds had started to download what is now Firefox. Things might have been a little different for Opera if they'd been more realistic about what an acceptable cost for a browser is, but that's just speculation nowadays.

Re:Opera 9.5 released today

[SEMW]

"After almost two years in development ... Amongst the major improvements are a revamped rendering engine, massive increases in performance, EV and malware security features, synchronisation of bookmarks, a re-engineered mail back-end, improved address-bar searching..." Doesn't sound like a "minor release" to me. Version numbers can be misleading: different organisations have very different ideas about when a new release should get a new version number. You can't compare versions numbers of different applications directly.

Re:Opera 9.5 released today

[csimpkin]

I think the general idea is that Opera makes money by selling a version for mobile uses. If they release the desktop version as open source, then someone else can port it to mobile platforms and eat into their revenue.

Re:Zoom

[Derek Pomery]

View->Zoom
Check off "text zoom only"

Re:Zoom

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because now it really acts as zoom: it doesn't resize only the text, but the images too (though this can be configured), as opposed in FF2 where only the text would change size, and thus the "Text size" terminology made more sense.

8.04 Hardy Heron users got it today

[MollyB]

It was part of the Update Manager offerings...
(no conflicts with beta add-ons)

Re:8.04 Hardy Heron users got it today

[WolverineOfLove]

Are you sure it wasn't RC1? http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/hardy-updates/firefox-3.0

Re:8.04 Hardy Heron users got it today

[MooseMuffin]

None of the release candidates identify themselves as release candidates in help/about. You're running RC1.

Re:8.04 Hardy Heron users got it today

[DaveM753]

It is RC1. The "About" screen doesn't say it's an RC, but the package did.

Re:What about the fsync problem?

[Daimanta]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421482

This is probably it.

Re:Zoom

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish there was a way to revert the 'Awesome Bar' to the standard address bar that FF2 had (with no automatic searching, just url matching), because I hate the new functionality. Of course there's a way. There's an extension. :)

Re:smaller memory footprint

[diegocgteleline.es]

It doesnt use the native widgets. It uses its own widgets and then it paints them so that they look like they were native (other browsers also do this)

Re:I'm waiting.

[Rurik]

Don't wait, contact the developers! Each add-on developer works independently from the rest of the system. I assumed my extension worked fine in 3.0 and was going to wait until FF3 became finalized, but I received enough comments and issues from beta users that I went and updated mine and continued to update the versions so that it would work with all of the betas and RCs. If there's an extension you need, email the authors and hound them to update it asap.

Re:What about Tabmix Plus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the developer's web page (http://tmp.garyr.net/), there is a beta that works fine.

Re:Addons

[tuffy]

NoScript, Adblock Plus (w. Filterset.G) and FlashBlock are supported in the current 3.0pre Firefox, so they'll work in the final build. Checking Mozilla's addons website isn't that hard, really.

Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta

[nuzak]

> I wonder how they came up with the name Firefox?

It used to be called Phoenix, which was to evoke the whole "rising from the ashes" imagery WRT the (at the time) moribund Mozilla project. The BIOS people didn't like that and asked them to change it, so they renamed it Firebird, which the database people weren't keen on. So finally they came up with Firefox, and it stuck. Better name anyway.

Re:Zoom

[deroby]

ctrl-shift-del is your friend ?

Re:smaller memory footprint

[Spy der Mann]

No, it's not. Haven't you read the news? They completely revamped memory management. Among the improvements, are:

• Reduced Memory fragmentation
• Fixed cycles with the Cycle collector
• Tuned the caches
• Adjusted how image data is stored (hint: compressed)
• Hunted down leaks. "Overall, we've been able to close over 400 leak bugs so far, most of which are very uncommon, but can still occur."

Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta

[Anonymous Coward]

It had to do with the real animal Fire Fox. I'm not sure if they meant the fox or the panda. Given the icon, I'm guessing the fox.

Re:Addons

[dq5 studios]

AdBlock (with filterset.g) No, you'll have to update to Adblock Plus and use one of the built in filters which is for the best anyways since Adblock was discontinued some time ago and Filterset.g has some horrible slowdown problems.

Re:opera is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, "faster" is absolutely not a value judgment. It's testable and quantifiable, and the claim that Opera is "faster," at least according to one benchmark, doesn't seem to be true. In context, I think maybe he meant "faster to the market" ... in that they got their update out "faster" than the Mozilla foundation did...

-AC

Re:Addons

[MSG]

Adblock plus deprecated filterset.g. That filterset caused too many problems for users, so adblock plus introduced new subscriptions that cause fewer problems and don't require additional components.

http://adblockplus.org/en/faq_project#filterset.g

In short: don't use filterset.g. Use Adblock Plus.

anonymous surfing

[Anonymous Coward]

much better to use one browser for 'professional' material, the other for... the more base side of things. even better to set the cache and history for the 'base' browser to minimum.

Re:opera is faster

[DiarmuidBourke]

Actually, this is somewhat true. With Opera speeddial, my 9 most viewed websites,are loaded before I request them.

Re:Can it [properly] handle mailto:?

[EricTheGreen]

Set Firefox 3 to launch GMail for mailto links

IMO getting the handler set up properly shouldn't be nearly this fussy, but it does work; I use it myself.

HTH...

Re:opera is faster

[bishiraver]

That's the HTML rendering engine. That only happens when:

• The page is loaded
• The DOM structure is changed
• A previously visible element is hidden, or vice versa
• Size of an element changes

The more important benchmark, especially for applications like google docs and other pseudo-application applications is the rewritten JavaScript engine in Opera 9.5, which is indeed extremely fast.

Re:Zoom

[SEMW]

IE7 had it first. Actually, I think you'll find that Opera had it several years before either IE7 or Firefox.

Re:What about the fsync problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fsync bug was fixed in rc2.

Re:I was expecting more to see Opera 9.5 news...

[Zwicky]

Create a Slashdot bookmark and set its keyword to '/.' (sans quotes).

Re:Will Firefox 3 fix the annoying .net bug?

[MP3Chuck]

If you SHIFT+Enter in the address bar it'll tack a http://www on the front and a .net on the end. It has happened to me accidentally before, but nothing consistent or even remotely frequent...

Pledge map: Can someone explain Poland?

[Liancourt Rocks]

Just checking the pledge map here: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

Gives some fascinating insights on which countries care about Firefox the most... and which countries are playing catch-up with the tubes (well done South America, gogogo Africa!)

Also interesting is the difference between Korea (4000+ pledges) and Japan (43000+) which are both IMHO, two Internet savvy countries. Even without accounting for the difference in size, from my experience, Korea just doesn't seem to care about Firefox (Korean sites are pretty much IE only).

However, the one I don't understand is Poland. Of all the countries in eastern Europe, how come so many pledges come from there? Say even compared to France or the UK?

So, any IT work to be found in Poland? Fast tubes? Yummy zubrovka and women? Can't go wrong with that, really...

Re:Pledge map: Can someone explain Poland?

[BZ]

South Korea has the minor issue that they started doing internet banking very early, before SSL got standardized. So they came up with their own encryption setup.

They use it to this day, with an ActiveX control to handle the encryption. Which means you can't use any serious bank site (and can't use a lot of e-commerce sites) in South Korea unless you're using IE on Windows. There is basically no marketshare for Macs or non-IE browsers as a result.

Re:Download Record

[bunratty]

According to the Download Day FAQ, they will discard duplicate downloads.

Re:Thank you.

[LMacG]

Try changing the value for browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false. I'm assuming that will turn off ctrl-enter for automatic ".com" completion as well.

Feature: Re:Will Firefox 3 fix the annoying .net?

[Anonymous Coward]

when typing in the url in the address bar:
[enter] Takes what you typed in, will assume http:// if not provided
[ctrl+enter] http://www.url.com
[shift+enter] http://www.url.net
[ctrl+shift+enter] http://www.url.org

It's not a bug.

Re:Zoom

[macdaddy]

That's because the address bar, location bar, URL bar is apparently no longer used for addresses, locations or URLs. Go figure.

Re:Memory issues

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Actually, most extensions have been updated for FF3, and one of the changes made in the allocator allows for automatic cycle collection. Previously, extensions had to break cycles themselves, making it relatively easy for them to leak memory, but with automatic cycle collection, it's easier to write a leak free extension. See this article on memory improvements

Re:Will Firefox 3 fix the annoying .net bug?

[D Ninja]

Additionally, if you hit Ctrl+Enter it'll tack a http://www. and a .com on the end.

I personally really like this feature.

Doesn't work for me either

[Bananatree3]

That about:config setting didn't do anything for the shift+enter. I finally gave in an downloaded the URL suffix addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/443. Once its loaded, just select options for it from the Add-on list and delete all the entries. That will take care of it once and for all.

However, I'm still on the hunt for a simple about:config setting.

Re:Zoom

[ggvaidya]

Microsoft and Opera Software ASA aren't really friends :-)

Actually: is Microsoft friends with anybody?

Re:opera is faster

[Jugalator]

Coincidentally, Firefox 3 also has a new extremely fast JavaScript engine since beta 5. I'm not sure if it was rewritten from scratch, but it's winning some tests at least.

Re:opera is faster

[Jugalator]

Here's one of those tests:
http://flickr.com/photos/nitot/2410514595/sizes/o/

When is google toolbar going to work with Firefox3

[mrmaster]

I've been loving Firefox 3 but all my bookmarks are in google toolbar. I can't convert at work until google toolbar works with Firefox 3. Shouldn't Google, who invests plenty with Mozilla, already have a working toolbar?

Re:opera is faster

[shutdown -p now]

Opera? - Some outdated, hacked to death, overbloated with tiny features GUI which looks and behaves differently from whatever OS you have. OMG - Opera still supports the MDI stupidity when even its own author - M$ - has declared it a major mistake in UI design.

This has changed a lot ever since Opera 9, and 9.5 release pushes further in this direction - for example, all the "single-letter" shortcuts are disabled by default. As for MDI, it has been disabled by default for ages, and you had to go to "Options -> Advanced" and look for a checkbox there somewhere if you wanted it. The reason why it stays, most likely, is that quite a few old-time Opera users still use it from time to time.

How to get it almost like the FF2 Adress Bar

[forgot_my_nick]

open about:config and:

1) Edit this key: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and set the value to 5 or 6 (or even 0).

2) Most importantly create this key: browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped Type: Boolean Value: true

The Awesomebar will now behave almost like the FF2 addressbar.

Re:I'm waiting.

[Kjella]

You know, I really don't have the time or patience to hunt down half a dozen different extension developres to hound them or assemble my browser by parts. Firefox is IMO not lean and mean, it's a stripped chassis. Using Firefox out of the box, I don't see why anyone would bother. It gets even more hilarious when people blame extensions for incompatibilities, memory leaks and such when extensions are IMO the best reason to use it. I use Opera because it seems to come with most things so reasonably as I want them, I'm sure I could probably tune a Firefox install to be even better but it's just not worth the time and effort. "Extendable" and "Self-assembly" are not synonymous, personally I wish someone would make "distro" versions of firefox and the most popular extensions as one release with proper integration testing. I guess by looking at the market share I'm not in the majority, but I'm happy with Opera and have no plans to switch...

Address Bar gTLD Shortcuts

[Mana Mana]

CTRL + ENTER => appends .COM
SHFT + ENTER => appends .NET
CTRL + SHFT + ENTER => appends .ORG

I wonder where this is configurable? I might want to map one of these to .CX instead.

BTW, I do like this for fast browsing:

CTRL L
CTRL + ENTER => appends .COM   <----------<<<< This is your choice obviously.

Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta

[Tubal-Cain]

Ubuntu hasn't updated to the RCs.

Re:opera is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, I've noticed that problem also. I do a google search and promptly start seeing cookies being blocked from the websites that google listed.
I hope that Firefox 3 will make this behavior configurable, I don't really like wasting my bandwidth on prefetching, nor do I want to risk "visiting" a bad site without my having actually clicked on it.

Opera 9.5 - Heads Up

[ed.markovich]

I am a big fan of Opera and was initially very disappointed with the 9.5 version that came out today. Much of non-trivial rendering was broken (for example, the chats in Gmail Chat were totally messed up.) I couldn't believe that my beloved Opera delivered such a turd. It was very very disappointing.

For some reason I decided to uninstall Opera, remove my profile and try again. This this time it started to work and WORKS GREAT. I guess there's something in my profile that's been there for years (it's my original config going back years...) that somehow messed up 9.5

So heads up. If Opera 9.5 works weird for you, try running on a clean profile.

-E