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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.

62 of 1,080 comments (clear)

  1. Download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Download by 8127972 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Does this count towards the World Record Attempt?

      --
      This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
    2. Re:Download by winphreak · · Score: 5, Informative

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

      --
      "I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
    3. Re:Download by an.echte.trilingue · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.
      --
      weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
    4. Re:Download by AigariusDebian · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    5. Re:Download by Khuffie · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    6. Re:Download by PrescriptionWarning · · Score: 4, Informative
    7. Re:Download by Furmy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Any downloads AFTER the time will result in

      "There were problems checking for, downloading or installing this update. Firefox could not be updatd because: AUS: No data was received (Please try again)"

      Same for mozilla.org, spreadfirefox.com. Yes, I know I can wait. I've already waited for the damn thing to start.

      I hope this stunt gets them to concentrate on the product rather than the publicity. The success of Firefox was not because of advertising, it was a good product spread by WOM and email.

    8. Re:Download by Pollardito · · Score: 5, Funny

      and if you, for example, want to download firefox 4.0, you should change the link like so: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-4.0&os=win&lang=en-US in this manner you can avoid the rush of people downloading 3.0 and the rush that will surely come with 4.0 as well.

    9. Re:Download by lymond01 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If Microsoft did this, everyone here would think this is a lame attempt at getting free advertising, which it is.

      Firefox is, without a doubt, the pet browser of Slashdot and for good reason. It rises from the ashes of the once great Netscape. As you may recall, Netscape was pounded into smush market share-wise by the integration of IE and Windows (which in turn caused Windows to be about the most insecure operating system on the planet).

      The gecko engine came about and Phoenix was created, then renamed Firebird, then onto Firefox, with a Netscape branded browser using the same engine.

      Firefox remains fairly standards compliant and open source, free as in freedom. Slashdot is a huge proponent of such things, so of course Firefox gets free advertising -- as in freedom and as in beer.

    10. Re:Download by LordSnooty · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In this day and age, when you're up against the marketing millions of Microsoft, you have to play the game. You're absolutely right that the product comes first but they have to make a splash - their rivals do.

    11. Re:Download by briggsb · · Score: 4, Funny

      Looks like Microsoft thinks the same thing, as they are abandoning development of IE8 for FF3.

    12. Re:Download by Ilgaz · · Score: 4, Informative

      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!

  2. I will not.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    be downloading FF!

    IE 5 is good enough for me!

    1. Re:I will not.... by kvezach · · Score: 5, Funny

      IE 5 is good enough for me!

      I know, but did you have to advertise it? I had just finished owning your computer; now all the other slashdotters will get on and kick me off with their own kits!

    2. Re:I will not.... by brunascle · · Score: 5, Funny

      you didnt know? Opera is adware. fortunately, we have IE 5.0 and Netscape Navigator as alternatives.

      wtf is Firefox?

    3. Re:I will not.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:I will not.... by cos(0) · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you seen the source of the open source programs that you swear by?

  3. Download DAY, Justin by Bertie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why's he moaning about what time it starts at when people have a whole twenty-four hours to find a suitable time to download the thing? It's not like we all have to sprint to our computers and start it on the minute.

    1. Re:Download DAY, Justin by Pvt_Ryan · · Score: 5, Informative

      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!

    2. Re:Download DAY, Justin by penguin_dance · · Score: 4, Funny

      But if he waits too long, they might run out. ;-)

      --
      If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
    3. Re:Download DAY, Justin by Sabz5150 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why's he moaning about what time it starts at when people have a whole twenty-four hours to find a suitable time to download the thing? It's not like we all have to sprint to our computers and start it on the minute. We are Slashdot! Turning servers into slag is what we do best!
      --
      "Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
  4. Don't you mean 1pm EDT? by holden+caufield · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought we were in Daylight Saving Time until November?

    --
    I'll create an amusing sig when I have something meaningful to post.
  5. I hate the awesome bar by kill-1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:I hate the awesome bar by daranz · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
    2. Re:I hate the awesome bar by abaddononion · · Score: 5, Informative

      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!

    3. Re:I hate the awesome bar by abaddononion · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:I hate the awesome bar by De+Lemming · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Some people do not like the new URL bar because it gives too much (unwanted) results because it also looks in your bookmarks and the browser history.

      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.

  6. Re:My findings... by ndansmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been using the RC releases, and while I do like the new browser, the memory footprint is still a monster. Currently, it's using over 175MB of ram for the windows I have open (21 different pages) - and that seems excessive to me. You're right, 21 pages seems excessive to me as well.
  7. Re:ubuntu linux? by eigendude · · Score: 5, Informative
    You can already have it in Ubuntu:
    sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0

    Ubuntu Hardy has it as the default Firefox browser.

  8. Firefox Download Day by Volanin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

    --
    If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
    If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
  9. I don't think they're going to meet their goal by alta · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
  10. Re:My findings... by erikina · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand this obsession of ram usage, and this is from someone with a laptop with 512MB's, and primary computer of 844MB (as reported by the OS, but 1GB in the official specs). But, I want my RAM to be used (if it's going to make performance better). That's why I have it. So sure, if you have memory problems I can see the concern. But I'm comfortably running VMWare and firefox (using 172MB atm) and I probably have less RAM than you.
    I guess, what's ultimate is a program that can scale its memory usage depending on availability. But I don't have any problems, so I won't complain.

  11. Re:My findings... by hansamurai · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm at 150MB with seven tabs which is fine with me. The real kicker is that Firefox has been running for at least a week now. FF2 would have slowly bloated to 400MB right about now and I would have been restarting it. I don't mind that it's using 20MB per tab as long as it's using it wisely and intelligently (for what it's worth I have 2GB at work). It has a lot of info in memory so everything is very snappy. I can reopen up to 10 closed tabs, go back in 15 pages in history on a tab that has been open since FF2 (and it has history from then too), and heck, I even like the so-called Awesome Bar. Typing just one word from the title or url has helped me out tremendously.

  12. I hope they have an MSI version for windows by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Otherwise all this hype will not convince corps to switch.

    Why MSI?
    -it's a corp standard.(STD switches, behavior)
    -It's customizable without changing the original package
    -It is designed from the ground up to run unattended or silent regardless if it's an upgrade or a new install.

    And Frontmotion (www.frontmotion.com/) != Mozilla
    It's a trust issue. Corps want "warm and fuzzies" and not what they will view as a hack.
    If Mozilla doesn't want to make an MSI package but still wants to entice the Corps to switch, host Frontmotion's MSI from the Mozilla site.

    Having GPO support or preinstalled Addons are gravy at this point.

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
  13. Re:What is this in Euros? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually, at the current exchange rate 0 Euros is a few bucks or so.

  14. 17th started at GMT by rescue+me · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Why did this not start on GMT so it was the 17th for the whole world at the normal time. 2. Why was it so hard to find a Mozillia definition of the 17th ;-) Smart guys and gals could have made this simpler.

  15. Re:Time Zones by sm62704 · · Score: 5, Funny

    in Justin Mason's view, some pretty annoying times of day for many parts of the world

    Sure, I can see lining up at my daughter's GameStop store at midnight, considering that whatever game they want may be sold out quickly.

    But a download? Who cares what time of day it's available? If it's available at 1:00 AM your time, then just start the download when you wake up, or when you get home from work.

    They're not going to run out of Firefoxes, you know. Relax.

    --
    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  16. Re:My findings... by Xzzy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's a PEBCAK error, not a fault with Firefox.

    Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.

    How much would you be complaining if you had to wait 5 seconds every time you switched tabs so it could swap in from disk?

  17. Re:When will their servers die? 1:02pm? by Bearpaw · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, but how much smoke do they have?

  18. Re:I'll pick it up by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  19. Timezone by erik.martino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do slashdot use obscure timezones like PST EST XST when there is a standard UTC?

    1. Re:Timezone by Dragonslicer · · Score: 4, Funny

      You said it - "standard" time. We all know how USA likes to not use standard units. Exactly. Everyone knows that timezones like EST and PST aren't standard.
    2. Re:Timezone by Buran · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot astronomers. Observations are routinely recorded in Universal Time.

      Ramble:

      The metric system may not be widely accepted among the general public in the US, but scientists use it, and so do many manufacturers and government agencies are supposed to as well. The standardized systems are there; the general public just refuses to use them, and signage/label makers aren't exactly helping things along.

      I like to drive people nuts by routinely using metric measurements and 24-hour time; I've had people scratch their heads at my car's dashboard because it gives time in those weird military units and happily will tell you the outside temperature in Celsius. (Thank you, VW, for leaving the worldwide preference menus in the US version of the GTI!). Soon I plan to acclimatize myself to metric fuel consumption readings; which is the standard used outside the US? I have several choices, such as km/L or L/100 km. Which one should I select?

      I got used to the metric system by just using it. Surely, the rest of us can do the same. It really is easier using base-10 instead of the crazy and arcane system that's "standard" here. I've already long since given up on weights and volumes when at the grocery store and just look at the metric equivalent on the label.

  20. Re:My findings... by FauxPasIII · · Score: 5, Funny

    > It literally POPS off the screen to say "Hello, please click me!".

    Where the hell did you buy that monitor?

    --
    25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
  21. Re:Has Mozilla managed to fix PDF yet? by rantingkitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be fair that's as much Adobe's fault for loading Acrobat with twenty times more extraneous BS than is needed to render a PDF. Mozilla should handle it more gracefully, maybe, but if you've ever tried opening Acrobat by itself, you know it takes bloody ages. And then nags you to update or register or update your registration or register your updates.

    You might want to consider using a PDF reader that sucks less. Foxit is pretty decent for Windows.

    --
    mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
  22. Hmmm by bluie- · · Score: 5, Funny

    The site seems to be bogged down for some reason...

    --
    life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
  23. Correction to the GPs post by macdaddy · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    1. Re:Correction to the GPs post by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      New features are great. That's one of the nice things about OSS. New features make their way into OSS projects faster IMHO. However forcing the use of a new and very controversial feature is not cool. It would be one thing if they added the feature and even turned it on by default if they wanted to give people a chance to use it. It's another thing to intentionally break support for the old way of doing it. That's rather vindictive in my opinion. We rail on other companies for doing similar things. Mozilla should not be excluded from our wrath simply because they're an OSS company.

    2. Re:Correction to the GPs post by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Replying to self. OMG, just read bug #403159. :

      I totally understand your use case, and why this change makes that task considerably more difficult. However, I'm pushing for this change based on the notion that all of the various people who have told me that Firefox is their favorite search engine don't scan a list of URLs, nor do they make a navigation decision based on the URL itself.

      Essentially what we are debating here is a fundamental change in what the location bar is for, from purely a widget for directly entering URLs, to being a local search engine for content you have seen on the Web (which happens to also display URLs). The developers' position is that Firefox should be morphed into a search engine. I thought the point of Firefox was to remove bloat and applications that don't belong in browsers. Otherwise, we'd still be using vanilla Mozilla. It almost seems like this dev thinks every browser should be its own spider and archive.org.
  24. Yo'all Better Hope... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Yo'all better hope that there isn't a Zero Day vulnerability in FF3 that the virus writing scum uncovered when they participated in the testing, as you know they have.

    Personally I'm going to wait for a few days just to ensure that no reported problems surface.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  25. 1:04pm by mattwarden · · Score: 5, Funny

    The servers, the servers, the servers are on fire.
    The servers, the servers, the servers are on fire.
    We don't need to download let the motherf***ers burn.
    Burn motherf***ers, burn.

  26. DDOS world record by renrutal · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe they will attempt the world record for the largest, willing, Distributed Denial of Service Attack.

    Well, what the hell, lets help bury their servers :)

  27. Re:Slashdotted by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the right term in this case is "Worlddotted", wasnt just a slashdot frontpage link.

  28. Downloading from their FTP server won't count by ahijado · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  29. Hoax! by birdguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    The idea of having the largest one day download was a Microsoft hoax designed to create a DOS attack on Mozilla.

  30. Okay Everyone ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Funny

    Keep hitting that "refresh" button to try and get to the Download site. I'm pretty sure that will help out the slashdot effect!

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  31. 1:46PM and still no download by skrowl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their web servers are toasted. When you try to do something like set a download record, perhaps you should ensure your IT infrastructure can handle it as well as your PR infrastructure can.

    --

    Prevent linux based DDOS's!
    http://linux.denialofservice.org/
  32. Passive Interest by Jekler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was sort of interested in helping them boost the download stats, but due to the mismanagement of this event I've mostly lost interest. When I woke up this morning I expected it to be available but it wasn't. By 10am there was still no real official word as to when this whole shindig was supposed to take place. If you're going to have an event, it would be good to give people advance notice as to when it begins. I didn't even know when it starts until 45 minutes after it began. Now trying to download, it's obvious they weren't even prepared for it because the page is down.

    Because I'm using Linux (Ubuntu) it's more convenient for me to wait until the most recent version is in the repositories, I'm not going to sit around and hope their download page starts working.

  33. My bad - by BucketOfLard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry people - I meant to hit DOWNLOAD, but accidentally hit DOS ATTACK.
    Boy is my face red.

  34. Firefox 3 Coming Soon! by pdboddy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    --
    Julie Moult is an idiot.
  35. FireFox successfully D.O.S. attacked themselves by jackspenn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sites been down for awhile. Maybe the Mozilla team can get the Guinness Book of World Record's "Most effective self inflicted denial of service attack."

    --
    Respect the Constitution