Firefox Download Day To Start At 1 p.m. EST

boustrophedon writes "Starting at midnight in their local timezones, downloaders have been asking when Firefox 3 will be ready for Firefox Download Day, June 17, 2008. Mary announced on the Spread Firefox Forum that downloads will commence at 10 AM PST." That means 1 p.m. East Coast time, and, in Justin Mason's view, some pretty annoying times of day for many parts of the world. Reader CorinneI supplies a link to PC Magazine's (very positive) overview of the new version's features, which praises the "speedy performance, thrifty memory usage, and, in particular, the address bar that now predicts where you want to go when you start typing (what Mozilla insiders refer to as the Awesome Bar)." FF3, even in Beta and RC form, and even with the extension incompatibilities I've run into, has quickly replaced FF2 as my preferred browser — for me, the improved drop-down autocomplete behavior alone is enough to justify the switch.

Comments

Download

[Anonymous Coward]

Download

Re:Download

[winphreak]

Any downloads before the time specified do not count toward the world record attempt.

Re:Download

[meringuoid]

NOT YET!

It's, what, an hour and a quarter to go? Don't download the bloody thing yet! Wait until it counts! If you haven't already got the beta you can wait another seventy-five minutes, right?

Re:Download

[Anonymous Coward]

Already posted at http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0.exe

Other builds at http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/ if you don't happen to be one of them god-fearin' red-blooded win32-runnin' USAians

Re:Download

[an.echte.trilingue]

Since not all of us use windows and want their system in english, let's decompose that link a bit:

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US

You select your version with the GET variables. So, for other OS's:

• Linux: change os=win to os=linux
• Mac: change os=win to os=osx

For other languages, you can substitute the language variable such as en-GB for British English, de for German and fr for French. Not all of them are up right now, but they will be soon.

Re:Download

[AigariusDebian]

http://www.aigarius.com/ff3_countdown.html - download timer countdown.

Re:Download

[trolltalk.com]

I for one will not be downloading Firefox 3 until this record attempt is over. I think it's just plain silly.

It's also impossible at this point. just tried (1:08 PM EDT, so it's past the 10:00 AM Pacific start time, and the servers are totally hosed.

Re:Download

[PrescriptionWarning]

Alternate FTP non-slashdotted link

ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/

Re:Download

[pmuschi]

I don't think FTP downloads as counted for the attempt. HTTP only, if memory serves me.

Re:Download

[sylvandb]

That link, at 1:30pm EDT, for at least for windows en-us, has last weeks' RC build, NOT the 3.0 release.

Dropped the ball, they did.

Re:Download

[Anonymous Coward]

if their servers keep logs of FTP transactions it might They previously said FTP downloads would not count. No "it might" about it.

Re:Download

[ProfessionalCookie]

Windows? And what's with

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

still showing Firefox 2?

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html

Still shows 3.0rc3

Am I missing something?

Re:Download

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link. For MAC users, it seems that following the link supplied by the article results in downloading a dmg 2.0.0.14 instead of 3.0. Using the above link and substituting os=osx worked fine.

Re:Download

[Ilgaz]

As an end user of small but popular shareware OS X apps, I know 2 solutions which helped those guys.

1) Make sure the server offering actual file is light httpd (Cocoatech does it)
2) Use truly huge thing like Amazon S3 which can stand whatever you can imagine

Funny, I wonder what does Amaazon S3 PR guys do with all the wages they get? Can you imagine the missed PR/Image opportunity? Same goes for cachefly etc. like dedicated services. Lets not forget Akamai too!

And unofficially...

[moronikos]

You can get it already: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US well, at least the windows, us-en version.

Re:And unofficially...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's RC 3.

Re:And unofficially...

[clang_jangle]

Or for OS X in U.S. English here: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx&lang=en-US

Re:And unofficially...

[nmg196]

That one post has probably trashed their attempt to break the record for most downloads in one day.
Now, everyone on slashdot will have downloaded it before the official 24 hour download period even starts.

Well done.

Re:And unofficially...

[hansonc]

So what? Since there is no record now, a single person downloading it in the "offical" period sets the record. Isn't it more important for people to use the browser?

Re:And unofficially...

[nmg196]

Nope... usually before it's released, they remove the "RC" designation from the name of the browser (about box etc). They almost never simply just release the actual release candidate binary. Therefore the binaries will be different. Sometimes the version number changes too... eg 1.98 RC4 might become 2.00.

Re:And unofficially...

[_Swank]

not really - the original post on mozilla says it'll be available at 10 AM PDT - i'll assume that's correct. slashdot managed to change this to 10 AM PST (technically 11 AM PDT) despite the fact that most of the US is on daylight savings time.

and, as many other posters have pointed out, all should have used demarcations of time that are not mostly US specific.

I hate the awesome bar

[kill-1]

Here is how to get more or less the old behavior. Go to about:config and set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true and browser.urlbar.richResults to false. Then restart.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[daranz]

There's also the Oldbar extension.

Seems like the awesome bar is something that people either love or hate. Personally, I don't like it. I prefer my URL bar to do straight autocompletion, rather than search through my history and bookmarks for matches. I use the URL bar to type in URLs, and while the awesome bar adds some nifty functionality it breaks that basic feature.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[ShieldW0lf]

This doesn't give the old behavior. When you type "foo" in the address bar, it does a pattern search for "LIKE '%foo%'", rather than doing a pattern search for "LIKE 'foo%'" as you would expect from an auto-complete algorithm.

Can anyone suggest how you might go about tweaking the SQL it passes to SQL Lite to only search URLs (not necessarily only typed ones, but not page titles) and without the leading wildcard?

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[abaddononion]

It's important to note this, from the oldbar site:

Note that the underlying autocomplete algorithm is the Firefox 3 algorithm, not the Firefox 2 algorithm. oldbar only affects the presentation of the results.

Oldbar, while nice, only changes appearance, not functionality.

Im with you guys, though. I despise the awesome bar, and dont understand why there isnt an easier/obvious way to get the old, URL based behavior. A URL bar that works based on URLs?! Blasphemy!

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[abaddononion]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.matchBehavior

If you set the value of this to "2", you will get what you're looking for. Sort of... This will cause Firefox's "awesome" bar to match "LIKE 'foo%'". However, it will still look at page titles, not strictly URL. Still, this is the closest Ive been able to come to replicating old behavior.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[rantingkitten]

Ah, bless you. I detest the "awesome bar" also, as I detest and loathe pretty much any application which tries to suggest to me what I want to do. Don't autocomplete my words. Don't underline words you think are spelled incorrectly. Don't mark up my grammar, don't suggest what sites I might be trying to visit. Just let me handle it and stay out of my face.

I will disable that piece of crap as soon as I get my hands on it.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[bcrowell]

I'd just like to point out that it adaptively learns how to sort the results, so you shouldn't discard it on first use. Give it some time to come up with the most relevant URLs (for you) on top.
I've been using it for months now, and it hasn't adapted to what I want. Anyway, I don't want to have to train software by painstaking repetition, and with uncertain prospects of success, like it's a puppy that needs to be housebroken. I want to be able to configure it to operate the way I want. Software that tries is guess what you want is a bad idea. Users don't want software that behaves unpredicatably, they want software that behaves predictably.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

[bcrowell]

I don't really get this... it's only "suggesting" what you're probably trying to type. If you prefer to just type out the whole url yourself, it's not going to stop you or overwrite it with their suggestion. They are just there for convenience -- if the algorithm is good enough, it will actually save you typing at least some of the time, and will never require you to type more than if it weren't there.
The problem is that it already had this feature, implemented in a way that I, and many other people, liked. Now they've reimplemented it in a way that we hate. For instance, I used to be in the habit of typing "en", and having it complete that to "en.wikipedia.org", so I could go to wikipedia with just a few keystrokes. Now that no longer works, because it pops up a dozen possibilities, such as clusty.com because its title is "clusty, the clustering search engine."

Re:ubuntu linux?

[eigendude]

You can already have it in Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0

Ubuntu Hardy has it as the default Firefox browser.

Firefox Download Day

[Volanin]

For those who still don't know, Mozilla is trying to enter GUINNESS
for most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Check it here:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord/

Everybody is asked to participate by downloading one single copy of
Firefox 3.0 today, June 17th!

ONLY FULL DOWNLOADS ARE CONSIDERED!
So, go to the Firefox site and get one FULL COPY!

http://www.getfirefox.com/

I don't think they're going to meet their goal

[alta]

When I go to the site I get:

The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

And this was with FF 2.0.0.14, so they can't blame my client.

base SVG support rising

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php

Re:My findings...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

But, I want my RAM to be used (if it's going to make performance better). That's why I have it.

And do you want one app with some nasty leaks using ALL of it?

No?

I didn't think so. That's why the memory footprint is being made a big deal of...

and primary computer of 844MB (as reported by the OS, but 1GB in the official specs).

Did you forget to enable High Memory support in your kernel?

Processor type and features --->
High Memory Support (on) --->
(X) 4GB

Re:I'll pick it up

[Penguinisto]

According to the 'About Mozilla Firefox' menu on my Ubuntu-borne copy of FF (the very one I'm using to type this missive), it says 3.0, and AdBlock Plus works just fine on it.

HTH,

/P

Re:Download DAY, Justin

[Pvt_Ryan]

Because the Dowload DAY starts at 10am PST on the 17th..

Which to SOME people is the 18th of June, yes there is a world out side of the US shock/horror.

If you are going to have a world wide "DAY" then you should either start at 00:00 UTC OR specify the start time in UTC OR Have a count down time so people can work out when it starts.

The main agro from all this is that:
a) They said the 17th but never specifed the Time zone
b) The Never specified a time (so people logically thought midnight)
c) They never specified a Timezone full stop.

TBPFH I am rather annoyed, As I assumed the start would be at 00:00 UTC and was looking forward to the massive rush to download it being over and me being able to download it @ 0930 in work.

Instead after much fafing about I finally discover ON THE FORUMS the time is 1000 PST, IT WASN'T EVEN NOTED ON THE FRONT PAGE!

Don't get me wrong I love FF but after this I wouldn't trust mozilla to organize a piss up in a brewery!

Re:Download DAY, Justin

[dfiguero]

It would have been fine if they started at 9am EDT, but PDT? Why so late in the day for CDT/EDT?

Re:My findings...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

No prob. I've made that mistake a time or two in the past myself. :-\

I speced out a (at the time) pretty nice MB a few years back. It uses RIMMs, though (I know, I know, Evil RamBus; it was the fastest thing at the time). I got 1G RAM for it. Boy was I pissed off when I built my kernel and finished installing enough of the OS to boot on its own only to find it wasn't using all the RAM. I hit several dozen sites trying to figure out if there was something about RIMMs and a 2.4.* kernel that I had to do special. Finally one day (not too many after install) I was bitching about it on a now defunct IRC channel (irc.drirc.net #pranknet) and one of the guys mentioned that to me. I couldn't believe I had been so dense... :-(

All was well after I enabled that...

Re:Time Zones

[Nate B.]

No. 1 PM EST would be 2 PM EDT.

"Spring forward. Fall back"

I agree that for a world wide product such as Firefox, UTC would have been the proper time frame to use.

Re:Time Zones

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Is 1pm EST, 12 PM EDT?

Pedantic alert. There is no such thing as 12 PM (or AM for that matter).

Actually, there is. Though I daresay that the US gov't printing office has a really strange idea of how it should work...

Re:I will not....

[Anonymous Coward]

me neither. Opera 9.5 is good enough for me.

Actually, that's a lie - I'll definitely install it and try it out, though unless it's particularly awesome I doubt I'll be using it much.

EDIT: fanboy tirade about unjest treatment of Opera on slashdot and why you should try Opera follows. I could delete the following section, but I'll leave it up to the moderators to mod me fanboy or troll.

Is the "awesome bar" really as awesome as Opera's full history search from the title bar that lets you search for any phrase in any page in the cache... for instance, I could find slashdot again by typing "anonymous coward" if I forgot the url or title, or maybe just something from the post I was reading like "firefox download".

Also, though Opera still lacks extensions, it does seem to have caught up with regard to add blocking, and it's had really easy options to disable sound, plugins (like flash), java or javascript, identify as other browsers, change encoding, full zoom on all page elements, etc. for ages.

Even if you think the fact Opera being closed source is shit, it's pretty impressive that it's so packed with features whilst still being small and fast. Firefox 2 always felt a bit clunky to me, though I've heard 3 is a lot better, so that's something I'm looking forward to testing.

I'm only posting this because I'm a bit annoyed that the post about the release of Opera 9.5, which is a pretty major Opera release got attached to a fucking post announcing the release of Firefox 3 this Tuesday after there have already been tons of posts about betas and mozilla marketting schemes. I know not as many people use Opera as use FF, but it is a nice piece of free software which easily competes with FF on many levels and should be of interest to many /. readers.

No Google Browser Sync

[jbarr]

I'm really bummed that there will be no Google Browser Sync, as this REALLY made using FF2 on multiple computers a dream. But at least we have the likes of the Foxmarks add-on.

Correction to the GPs post

[macdaddy]

I would have modded you down as being inaccurate but doing so would mean that I couldn't correct the inaccuracy. So I'm passing up on the opportunity to mod you and am instead going to fix the mistake.

As of FireFox 3.0b3 browser.urlbar.richResults no longer works. The ability to chose your own search results style was removed by the Mozilla developers as part of bug #407836. They're illogical viewpoint is explained in bug #403159.

And, for the record, Oldbar does not fix the problem. It does not disable the searching style introduced by FF 3.0. It only makes the results look a little more like 2.0.

According to this article browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped no longer works either. The value of browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped is now ignored.

It's not the GP's fault either. Dozens of articles have been published in the past few months that have old, outdated information. Even Redhat put it in their Knowledgebase on 6/4. The sheer number of articles attempting to help people disable the "awesome bar" should make the developers realize that this is not a "feature" that everyone wants. I agree with the GP. I too HATE the awesome bar. It's a shame too because I would love to have the fixes for the memory leaks in FF 2.0 that don't exist but FF 3.0 addresses anyway.

Re:Correction to the GPs post

[Anonymous Coward]

The sheer number of articles attempting to help people disable the "awesome bar" should make the developers realize that this is not a "feature" that everyone wants

It is certainly reason enough not to download it. There is enough bad manners, poor design and bloat on the web already without including more of it in the browser. From what I have read here it would be pointless to download it. Please Mozilla: faster, lighter, more rock solid with no crashes and hard to exploit, save the silly fluff-n-stuff as add-ons for those who like silly fluff-n-stuff.

Going, Gone

[IwarkChocobos]

They didn't prepare for this very well now, did they? Someone dropped the ball. Site's been down since like 12:56

Re:When will their servers die? 1:02pm?

[iknowcss]

Well, considering the fact that www.mozilla.com and www.getfirefox.com are completely inaccessable ATM, I would say "plenty of smoke."

Re:I will be happy if they have controls

[brentonboy]

I will be happy if they have controls... to enable and disable the color profile management. They do.

They Noticed...

[Forvak]

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/outages.html

Direct FTP Link to mirror

[zygwin]

This is the link to FTP site: ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/ Not sure if downloading from here will contribute to the counter.

FOR CANADA ONLY

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mozilla.isohunt.com/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/

It is supposed to STILL COUNT for the record... give it a go in other places, but the site says for canada only.

Downloading from their FTP server won't count

[ahijado]

Here's what mozilla is saying from their ftp server site: ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/mac/index.html We're not quite ready yet! We're just as excited as you are for our upcoming release, but we're still putting the finishing touches on Firefox 3: preparing the new mozilla.com website, getting our severs ready for downloads, and doing our final pre-launch checks. You can follow our progress if you'd like! The files in this directory are - for now - only meant to be used by our testers. Downloading them directly can harm our ability to distribute Firefox efficiently, and will also not be counted as part of our attempt to set a Guiness World Record for the most software downloads in a day. If you'd like to be notifed the minute that we launch, please go to sign up for Download Day. Or just head over to getfirefox.com on Tuesday, June 17th after 10am PDT.

Re:I'm going to miss

[osu-neko]

To me this is a deal breaker, I have 5 computers I keep in sync. I hope someone else actually picks this up or they get a clue.

You mean like Foxmarks?

Firefox 3 Coming Soon!

[pdboddy]

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/17/firefox-3-coming-soon/ "The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!). Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live. The 24 hours period will be clocked from that moment. Thanks for your continued support." Posted by Melissa Shapiro There we have it... We helped slashdot Mozilla. :P

Re:Firefox 3 Coming Soon!

[De Lemming]

They also posted on Twitter: "hey everyone: servers coming back up soon, please be patient."

Wrong d/l link for FF 3.0 on Mozilla!

[mprindle]

I finally got the spreadfirefox site to come up and clicked on the Download Firefox 3 link which directed me to the Mozilla site. Looking at the download link it's sending me to download FF 2.0.0.14 not 3.0! Below is the link to a screen shot of the D/L link.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/1466/wrongfirefoxmm4.png

Re:I hope they have an MSI version for windows

[Culture20]

... double click and it installs either way. You'd like to go double click on all 4000 workstations and 3000 (worldwide) laptops in some organizations? In environments that size, homogeneous software rollouts on heterogeneous hardware with multiple OSes, having a filetype your software delivery program understands is helpful.

Re:Official count?

[njahnke]

I wonder what this is ...

http://downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com/