Slashdot Mirror


A Few Firefox 3 Followups

An anonymous reader writes "Using data generated by the Mozilla Firefox download pledge page, the map on this blog post ranks countries, not by absolute number of pledges made, but rather on a per capita basis. This analysis yields some interesting conclusions about where open source is strongest and weakest." Anonymous Warthog writes "That didn't take long. In a blog posting from the TippingPoint DVLabs security team (of Kraken and CanSecWest hacking contest fame), they confirmed that they reported a vulnerability in Firefox 3.0 to Mozilla a mere five hours after it was released. Additionally, there was a posting on the Full Disclosure security mailing list from someone that purports to have another vulnerability in the works as well. In the grand scheme of things, this probably means nothing to the general security of Firefox, but you can be sure the browser zealots on all sides will be watching carefully." Finally, from reader Toreo asesino: "Microsoft have congratulated the Mozilla team by sending them their second cake (minus recipe) to Mozilla's Mountain View headquarters to congratulate them on shipping FireFox 3, which went live right on time last night." Congratulations are indeed due on both the browser and the release process — looks like the Firefox fever (despite some seriously taxed servers) resulted in more than 8 million downloads in 24 hours.

13 of 407 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it. by Slashdot+Suxxors · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't bash it if you haven't used it. FF3 will do it's best to migrate all the add-ons and stuff you have on FF2. If the add-on isn't compatible, it will tell you when it is.

  2. Re:Hey timothy: by timothy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I went to law school, and it just sort of got dropped as a priority during that time :)

    Perhaps it'll return one day -- or not.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  3. Re:Why is this considered a world record? by Toreo+asesino · · Score: 5, Informative

    My guess is this is a record for a complete application downloads in a day, rather than patches or add-ons.

    As in, it's supposedly unique people choosing to download the setup package, and presumably running setup thereafter - not some automated installation.

    --
    throw new NoSignatureException();
  4. Re:Instructions Please!!! by lordofthechia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Amen to that. Too many apps distributed in tar.gz format have no instructions with them (or on the website). How hard is it to include the following lines of instructions (preferably near the download link):

    1. First you should check your OS repositories to ensure you cannot install this program via that method. Search for: blah
    2. If the program is not available in your distro's repositories (or you desire a newer version)
            a. Download the following tar.gz file to your HDD
            b. Move the downloaded file to the location you wish to install it
            c. Open a command window and type:
                      blah -xyz filname.....
    3. To launch the program type "blah"

    About your 2nd question though. I would go ahead and select "Bookmarks" -> "Bookmark all tabs" and save them in 1 folder. Then if it works and your session is still there you just need to delete that folder. Else, just go to your bookmarks and right click on the folder you created and select "Open all in tabs".

    --
    Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
  5. Opera 9.50 is Also Out by BountyX · · Score: 4, Informative

    Speaking of internet browsing, Opera 9.50 just came out as well. Has full text history search and my favorite feature...Opera Sync. I opened 10 of the same internet sites with Opera and Firefox 3 and compared the memory imprint, FF3 was 10 mb greater. Opera was already configured to grab a ton of my RSS feeds, so I believe without RSS feeds bein pulled 9.50 could have had a good 20 mb on ff3.

    Just wanted to shed some light on a lesser known, but in my opinion, very good browser.

    --
    Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
  6. Re:Already slashdotted. That was quick 0.0 by cuby · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
  7. Anyone doing research keeps tabs open. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Buyers for computer parts often have to keep lots of tabs open.

    Anyone doing research that cannot be finished immediately needs to keep tabs open.

  8. Re:Mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Corale cache worked for me, but it seems sluggish now.

    downloaded version

    Lameness filter prevented me from pasting in the text.

  9. Re:CPU hogging bug not fixed: Top 20 excuses by ClamIAm · · Score: 5, Informative

    You've posted references to or versions of this little diatribe three times in this thread. This is rather tiring, because the only reference I see you making to any actual Bugzilla entries is in a post from over two years ago. Of the two bugs you reference in that post, one is marked "fixed" and the other "invalid".

    Now normally I would request that you either give us links to actual bugs that are outstanding. But I'm not going to do that, because I know you can't be objective when discussing this issue.

    How do I know this? Because the bug marked "invalid" appears to be submitted by you. Thus I suspect that your vitriol for the Firefox/Mozilla people is a personal response to feeling scorned or something, and I'm not going to waste my time arguing with someone who argues because they had their feelings hurt and therefore holds an irrational grudge about something.

  10. Re:CPU hogging bug not fixed: Top 20 excuses by aeoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    In all honesty though, I use Firefox all the time on all the computers, PC and Mac, and I use gmail, and I've never seen my memory use go above 200M (usually around 150M). And even if I can get the memory usage to go up by opening 20 tabs full of pages with huge images, together with gmail, I don't get a CPU spike.

    In fact, I've never gotten a CPU spike. None of the friends I have that use FF got a CPU spike, ever.

    So, I hope you can see the problem here. Many people use FF and never experience what you're talking about. In fact, every time I read it, I think it's just trolls bullshitting. I hope someone can post a video of a computer with FF3 suffering from that bug so we can have proof that the bug exists. I don't think it's a real bug.

    But let's say it is real. This bug, since it occurs in corner cases, is going to be hard to fix. It will be hard to find. It probably has to do with multi-threaded code and data sharing between threads, or it has to do with garbage collector. Either way, it's not easy.

    Let's talk about other browsers now. I won't bother with IE. Let's take Opera. I use Opera Mini 4 all the time. That piece of shit has bugs and breaks all the time for me. The only reason I use it is because it's better than the built-in browser, which works better than Opera, but gives me a bookmark list that's controlled by my phone carrier, which I don't want. So because I want to control my own bookmarks, I have to use Opera on my blackberry. Clearly Opera is no angel. I am a very unsatisfied Opera user. And how hard is it to fix a bug in an app that's only 130kb long? EH?? Should be cake, right? Opera Mini does crappy rendering on many pages and the most annoying thing is that sometimes it loses my feeds or breaks them so that I have to reinstall them. And there are usability issues, such as when I want to search Google, I have to click way too many times for comfort (why can't I use the enter key, once? Why do I have to click to start typing, then type, then click to open a menu and select "OK", then scroll down to search button and again click on it... why ????? WTF OPERA??).

    I think Mozilla does a fine, fine job. That they can't please a certain vocal minority is understandable. And the constant "angel" example of Opera is pure bullshit.

  11. Re:Awesomebar? by amaupin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Now as I start to type "s" for slashdot, instead of a list of URLs like slashdot.org, somethingawful.com, etc. I get a huge list of pages where "s" appears anywhere in the URL or title of the page. Flash MX Design, CBS News, gamesocks.com, etc. ... all apparently culled from my bookmarks or pages I visited recently. It takes much longer to scan through the list (partly because the page titles are now shown along with the URL) and find the actual page I want.

    The location bar is for URLs. Not page titles. Not search queries. Just addresses.

  12. Re:Download safe, but useless by ozmanjusri · · Score: 3, Informative
    At the very least it would have been nice to be able to obtain a version that statically links in libpangocairo.

    That's the distro mainteaners' job.

    And I'm sure one will be available in a few weeks if enough people want it.

    In the mean time, Pango/Cairo is the font layout and rendering engine that makes the new Firefox look better, and the rest of us want that, so you'll have to pry it out of our cold, dead hands...

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  13. Re:Download safe, but useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm using FF3, have one tab open and FF is using 94,865 K of RAM. And they were supposed to have fixed all those memory leaks?! Doesn't look like it from here. It's about:config time again, I see.


    Meanwhile, here are some unbiased results from Ars Technica, showing the memory usage of firefox 3 in comparison with other browsers, with 50 tabs open.

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

    If you want lower memory usage than what firefox 3 can give you ... you would need to use no browser at all it would seem.