Mozilla Pitches Firefox 3.1 Alpha For July Release

An anonymous reader writes "Just a week after Mozilla shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009. According to a draft schedule discussed at a recent meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009. A month ago, when Mozilla first started discussing Firefox 3.1 internally, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said the upgrade's target ship date was the end of 2008. If Mozilla holds to that plan, Firefox 3.1 would be its first fast-track update. Firefox 3.0, for instance, launched approximately 20 months after its predecessor, Firefox 2.0."

Comments

No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Vectronic]

But so what?

There's nothing in the article or summary that hasn't already been covered in the other 76 articles about Firefox in the last 2 months.

Firefox team is still developing Firefox... shit, so is Opera, so is IE, Safari, etc, etc...

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Kinky Bass Junk]

Err, release dates, maybe?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[dnwq]

It's developing faster.

What significance that has depends on how much you care, I guess.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[dotancohen]

Err, release dates, maybe?

Release dates, what's that? Firefox2 didn't even make it to 2.1 after a year and a half, and Firefox1 jumped right up to 1.5.

What is with Mozilla and their versioning?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[neokushan]

What's versioning got to do with release dates?
It even says in the summary that this is to be the first "fast-track" update, hence the relatively minor version jump.
Firefox 3 was a huge leap over firefox 2, hence the major jump. 1.5 was more of an extension to FF1 than an entirely new version, so to me, at least, the inconsistent version numbers are consistent with the changes and additions to the browser.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[FooBarWidget]

Bah, of all the things that one can complain about, you complain about the version number? I thought version numbers in open source projects don't matter?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[dotancohen]

I thought version numbers in open source projects don't matter?

Evens are stable, odds are not. Point-point releases are bugfixes, and point releases add functionality. Major version releases include major UI changes and break backwards compatibility.

FOSS versioning is important, but Mozilla does not follow it.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Goaway]

That's the policy of a handful of projects. There's no such thing as an official "FOSS versioning", and if there was, what you described would not be it.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[smittyoneeach]

Well, if it fixes that tendency to crash the browser if I close a Gmail tab, I'm all for it.
Switching Gmail to BasicHTML and then closing the tab preserves the session. And this ugly baby is easily repeated. Saw bug reports on both Ubuntu and Gentoo about this.
I dunno if it's FF3.0 proper, or the half-dozen extensions (which performed flawlessly under 2.0.14), but it sure is annoying.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[MMC Monster]

Remember that version numbers are more of a marketing issue than a coding issue.

After all, where is Windows NT v1.0 and 2.0?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[EvilRyry]

After all, where is Windows NT v1.0 and 2.0?

See OS/2.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it obvious, Slashdot love Firefox because it's Open Source, everything else must die, regardless of it being better..

Classic example. Frontpage news, Firefox 3 being released next week. Opera 9.5 being released that day (and being substantially better than FF3) did not even get a mention.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[David Gerard]

What's your extension load? I've been running FF3 since January, as Minefield nightlies, on XP and Linux, and haven't seen anything of the sort.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[CrazedSanity]

Thank you. I was trying to post the same, but I apparently lost my cookies when I upgraded to FF3. Many projects use the {Major}.{Minor}.{Bug/Service Release} model, pretty much as described, but many only appear to use the model. For some, the second digit is the major version.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[kat_skan]

Okay, so where is OS/1, smart guy?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell was that modded Funny?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Evens are stable, odds are not.

That is the only thing Mozilla doesn't follow, just like many other FOSS projects.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Catching up to IE7? Maybe they should go to year versioning, IMO they are at least 2001 better

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[gnick]

...but I apparently lost my cookies when I upgraded to FF3.

I had the opposite reaction. I admit to tossing my cookies after noticing the memory usage that FF2 was inflicting, but upgrading to FF3 wasn't in the least bit nauseating - Actually kind of pleasant.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[CrazedSanity]

That's just funny. I meant some of my browser cookies.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[FireXtol]

Who cares what version they call it, as long as it increments...? Seriously. I care about it crashing NUMEROUS times a day! And I hate the awesome lame bar.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

DOS

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[coolsnowmen]

Remember that version numbers are more of a marketing issue than a coding issue.

After all, where is Windows NT v1.0 and 2.0?

Only if you are trying to grab customers through hype.

Plenty of OS projects use version numbers to actually tell something.
I've seen the following:
Major=ABI change
Minor=functionality change
Revision=bug fix only

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Blimey85]

OS/1 was originally called OS/0 but there was a division by zero issue so they changed it. Unfortunately this happened late at night after much frustration and there was a mistake in the math resulting in 0+1 equaling 2 (for large values of 1 apparently).

Please never mention this again. The devs feel terrible for this oversight.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Rysc]

Try disabling Firebug or any other page-munching extensions (greasemonkey might be an issue, too).

I've used FF3 betas and release for months, no issues with gmail. Very few crashes of any kind.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Snaller]

But I heard there was a dangerous exploitable bug in 3.0 - so if it takes them that long to fix it - well that's almost microsoft!

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[BenoitRen]

Actually, Firefox 1.0 to 1.5 was just as big a leap as Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 was. Both had a brand-new, much-improved Gecko version, the core of the web browser.

• Firefox 1.0 - Gecko 1.7
• Firefox 1.5 - Gecko 1.8
• Firefox 2.0 - Gecko 1.8.1
• Firefox 3.0 - Gecko 1.9

Firefox 3.1 will be based on Gecko 1.9.1. Firefox developers just like to play with the version numbers.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Directrix1]

I'm assuming you mean the lame awesome bar not the awesome lame bar. You just don't make sense.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Spoke]

Interesting, I notice the same thing happening as well when I close my tabs out at the end of the day. Close Gmail and boom!

I have these extensions installed:

CookieCuller 1.3.1
Firebug 1.1.0b12
Firesizer 0.64
FlashGot 1.0.4.2
Html Validator 0.8.5.1
Nagios Checker 0.12.2

What about you?

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[smittyoneeach]

DownThemAll 1.0.3
mediaplayerconnectivity 0.9.1
NoScript 1.7.4
Theme: NASA Night Launch 0.6.20080624
disable all of these, still crash-crash
disabled all 9(!) media plug-ins, still crash-crash.
The fact that switching to basic HTML saves the browser would seem to take one in the direction of the javascript interpreter, at least for starters.

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[Spoke]

Strange, got another Fedora 9 system (the crashing Firefox in my grandparent post is also a Fedora 9 system) where it doesn't crash when closing gmail with:

Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
CookieCuller 1.3.1
Firebug 1.1.0b12
Html Validator 0.8.5.1

A quick google on "firefox gmail close crash" turns up a ton of hits to go off and read...

Re:No Offence To The Devs or Firefox

[smittyoneeach]

Yeah, it's a gentoo system on almost the latest git kernel.
Good excuse to compile with debug flags and see what gdb has to say.

turns up a ton of hits

Or compile a VCS checkout.

Acid 3

[Spy der Mann]

Let's hope the Mozilla devs get the Acid3 test to work with Firefox 3.1.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Re:Acid 3

[Anonymous Coward]

obligatory 3.11 for Workgroups tired nerd joke goes here

Re:Acid 3

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

You can keep dreaming. While Firefox 3.1 is certainly going to improve on Firefox 3.0 (Firefox 3.0 gets 71/100, Firefox 3.1 pre-alpha 1 gets 80/100, I predict Firefox 3.1 final to get 80-90/100), the aim to make changes drastic enough to make Firefox 3.1 pass Acid3 and the aim to get Firefox 3.1 released in a Q4 2008/Q1 2009 timeframe are plainly incompatible. I'd expect Acid3 to pass in Firefox 4.0 myself. Shouldn't be much of a surprise given how long it took Firefox to pass the Acid2 test, but then that never stopped us from using it. ;-)

Re:Acid 3

[dotancohen]

Let's hope the Mozilla devs get the Acid3 test to work with Firefox 3.1.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

And how does that help normal browsing? The acid3 test was made just so that Opera could scream Fr1st P0st again.

Re:Acid 3

[hedwards]

I'd really rather they focus on important things first. The Acid tests are specifically much harder than what a browser needs to handle to do a good job with web browsing, in fact a few of the tests specifically use broken code IIRC.

Really the updates to the bookmark system scheduled for 3.1 are probably going to make a bigger impact on most users than Acid compliance would.

I think the main point of getting 3.1 out there is to get the features in that couldn't be completed for 3.0 but weren't necessities. And with the level of rebuilding that 3.0 required it's not a shock that a few less important features would have to be dropped to get the important stuff finished.

Re:Acid 3

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

I'll probably enjoy the user interface changes myself (I haven't go acquainted much with the 'awesomebar', I'm waiting on my extensions), but I'm really more excited about some backend changes. @font-face is my 'pet bug' of the moment, I'd like to see that in Firefox 3.1. I'm also watching progress on SVG animation and SVG in img tag. I'm reasonably hopeful for seeing better and more flexible SVG support in Firefox 3.1, and it's about time.

Re:Acid 3

[mdew]

80/100 on the current nightly builds, http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7533/acid3trunkok0.jpg

Re:Acid 3

[pdusen]

I would agree, but they HAVE to shoot for Acid 3 compatibility for the next release or browser nerds will be up in arms and it will be a huge PR problem.

I mean, look at all of the dumbasses who already compare its Acid 3 score with other browsers who do better. They will be even less easy to quiet down next time around.

Re:Acid 3

[Jellybob]

I would agree, but they HAVE to shoot for Acid 3 compatibility for the next release or browser nerds will be up in arms and it will be a huge PR problem.

It'll only be a PR problem in the small circle of "browser nerds", everyone else will just get on with their lives, having realised there's more to life then what score your favourite browser gets in the Acid 3 test.

Re:Acid 3

[Goaway]

The Acid tests are specifically much harder than what a browser needs to handle to do a good job with web browsing, in fact a few of the tests specifically use broken code IIRC.

The things tested by ACID3 are not in general use because browsers don't reliably support them. Many would be in use if they were actually supported. That is the aim of ACID3, to drive browser makers to actually fix these things so people can finally start using them.

Re:Acid 3

[thetoadwarrior]

It renders it much better than the others do.

Re:Acid 3

[Dwedit]

Which program other than RealPlayer (since G2) does SVG animation?

Re:Acid 3

[Derek Pomery]

Clearly not just broken code. Comment #1 on a bugzilla bug I'm not going to link to out of thoughtfulness to bugzilla.

"FF2, FF3, Opera9.2x and Opera9.5b have the behavior, which DOM 2 Range defines
(although the wording in the spec could be better for sure).
Safari3.1 doesn't have that behavior nor does "ACID3'ed-Opera".

I've proposed that ACID3 should be fixed, but so far no success in that."

Re:Acid 3

[n0-0p]

Acid3 is a dumb test. Acid1 and Acid2 tested against a number of dependencies and special cases to ensure broad compliance with the standard. That's what made them useful tests.

In contrast, Acid3 is a hodgepodge of features from different standards that are broken or unimplemented in different browsers. It lacks the coherence of the earlier tests. That means you can game it pretty easily by implementing one small part of a standard while not having a genuinely useful implementation. In fact, that's what several browser vendors are doing.

Instead of randomly picking features from HTML, CSS, SVG JavaScript, and SMIL, Hixie should have done an Acid-style test for each standard. That would make it a lot more useful, like the previous Acid tests.

Re:Acid 3

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying that bloat and eye candy are more important than handling errors and rendering according to the html specs? How Microsoftesque. Evidently Mozilla agrees with you. From the article:

"Mozilla called the race to a perfect score [on Acid3] "a puzzle game" and said it wouldn't divert resources from the still-under-construction Firefox 3.0 to match its rivals."

There are bugs that have been around for years. One of my favorites is when they close a bug because the website that demonstrated it is gone, not because they have fixed it (see bug 205653, for example).

Another is a core rendering mistake that they won't fix because they aren't web designers, they're programmers. Try to make a form with two columns: text field boxes on the right and labels on the left. Pretty typical, right? Now make some of the text fields textarea. You still want them to be the same width as the text fields, and to line up in both IE and FF. Good luck. See bug 33654 filed Mar 2000.

Re:Acid 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then you can dream on, because IE is basically the only browser that matters. Maybe Firefox matters a little bit, currently, I don't know, but as long as IE doesn't implement these features, they are more or less worthless.
And it doesn't look like Microsoft is planning on implementing them, considering the focus on Silverlight.

Re:Acid 3

[Goaway]

The earlier Acids were also full of tests against hand-picked bugs in the various browsers, you know.

Re:Acid 3

[Goaway]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/19/2231235

Re:Acid 3

[Your.Master]

It's not so much the hand-picking vs. browsers, it's the fact that they hand-pick without regard to categorization. You can pass without being worthwhile in any of those standards, and you can fail miserably while be very close to compliance in all of those.

A net effect of that is that browser A being Acid3-compliant and browser B not being so, has almost no meaning.

Re:Acid 3

[Goaway]

Things that already worked in the main four browsers were specifically excluded, as testing for those would serve no purpose. That leaves you with some fairly esoteric stuff.

Re:Acid 3

[hdante]

On the other hand, Webkit and Presto got around 50 points in three months of development after the release of Acid3. Gecko development model seems to be old-fashioned. Hopefully Konqueror and Epiphany will switch to Webkit. Firefox developers should consider that also.

Re:Acid 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Which I find funny. The OS crowd is always going on about standards compliance but the most popular OS browser isn't and nobody cares.

I've written some cross browser code before. Nothing fancy. Firefox shits me as much as IE. If you want good cross-browser code, I reckon Safari is superior for testing. Probably Opera too.

Re:Acid 3

[Mr. Jax]

As far as I can see Firefox 3 doesn't even pass the acid2 test perfectly. If you compare http://acid2.acidtests.org/#top and http://acid2.acidtests.org/reference.html you can see that the nose in the reference rendering is smaller. To pass the acid2 test it should match exactly.

Re:Acid 3

[timw4mail]

What's the point of rendering incorrect code correctly? The Acid tests are stupid and useless. I'd rather see steps toward more standards compliance...so people can see when they've made a mistake coding.

Re:Acid 3

[Jellybob]

The point is that large amounts of markup in the wild is invalid. That's not going to change any time soon, so browsers have to know what to do about it.

If you want to know when you've made a mistake, run your markup through a validator (http://validator.w3.org) which will tell you exactly what is and isn't correct.

Sadly in most cases you'll then have to break it again to make things work in IE, but that's just the way it is when it comes to web development at the moment.

Re:Acid 3

[BZ]

> What's the point of rendering incorrect code correctly?

Most code on the web is "incorrect". The point of rendering it correctly is interoperability.

Also, ACID3 is not exactly testing "incorrect" code. Have you ever read the test?

Re:Acid 3

[timw4mail]

My point is that we need to get beyond accepting incorrect code. Haven't we yet learned that Standard's Compliance is the best way to interoperability? What's the point in continuing to bend over backwards for quirks mode?

Re:Acid 3

[BZ]

Standards compliance is indeed the best way to interoperability. And the standard needs to specify handling of all possible inputs. Now not all inputs are considered correct, but that doesn't affect the interoperability situation.

In other words, it's the old "be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you send" approach. Except now people have realized that the standard needs to specify exactly how to be liberal, because otherwise you get problems when people are not in fact strict in what they send.

And given that the senders are by and large not actually aware of the standard in practice on the Web, the best way forward is to specify what to do with all possible byte input streams.

Re:Acid 3

[pdusen]

Maybe I'm missing your point. The topic here is the ACID 3 test. Are you saying that the ACID 3 test is built on quirks?

Useless summary

[Anonymous Coward]

They could change the version number and release a production-quality 3.1 tomorrow. What matters is the new features/bugfixes/optimizations in 3.1. Without them there's no context for the news.

Re:Useless summary

[Kinky Bass Junk]

For some strange reason, you are required to RTFA.

Neat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neat

Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

3.1 is badly needed! Firefox 3.0 is crashing left and right. I guess they were too eager to get it out the door.

P.S: I don't have any add-ons installed.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[AceofSpades19]

What are you talking about?, firefox 3 works perfectly fine over here

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Kinky Bass Junk]

I have never had Firefox 3 crash and have been using it since beta 1 on Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Linker3000]

Have to agree - not sure if its add-on related but since I updated several PCs to FF3 I have had about 2-3 browser crashes a week and one UK grocery shopping site makes FF3 just 'disappear'.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[hyades1]

I had 3.0 beta virtually from the get-go. On my machine, it's crash-happy. So is the official release. Not often. Not all the time. But I occasionally get a nice little grey box telling me that Firefox has crashed, and asking me if I'd like to report the circumstances.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[wtfispcloadletter]

Try using it without any add-ons. It's been rock solid here and I have 15 different add-ons installed with 40-50 different tabs open (I've been researching a few different topics and have had FF3 like this for a couple of weeks). There is still a memory leak or two, I suspect an add-on is causing the problem. If I leave the browser open with that many tabs memory usage still creeps up. Not nearly as fast as FF2, but after a few days of opening and closing other tabs and general browsing FF3 will be eating up 750MB to 1GB of memory. At which point I need to close it and restart it.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[theheadlessrabbit]

it makes me feel very dirty to say this, but on my dual boot laptop, fire fox 3(no add-ons) has been crashing very often in Ubuntu, but, it has been working flawlessly under winXP.

so, my options are:
1. use a buggy, crashy web browser in a rock solid OS.
2. use a rock solid web browser in a buggy, crashy OS.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[SanityInAnarchy]

3. Use a stable, mature browser in a rock solid OS -- Konqueror! ...Who am I kidding? Konq is usually pretty solid, but likes to crash (very occasionally) when editing textareas. Unlike Firefox, the contents of that textarea will be completely gone... which leads to a lot of re-typed Slashdot comments.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[aussie_a]

I do have add-ons installed and it hasn't crashed once. Aren't anecdotes fun?

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 2 is in the Hardy repositories.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Nightspirit]

I understand what you are getting at, but XP shouldn't crash, and if it does you likely have a driver or hardware problem. However, if it makes you feel better under Vista firefox 3 crashes constantly while firefox 2 only rarely crashed. I would switch back if firefox 3 wasn't so much faster.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[clickety6]

It also has new weird behaviour like the right mouse click sometimes deciding to select random items off the right click context menu. Still can't find a workaround for this ...

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[imbaczek]

IME usually it's flash. install flashblock or noscript and enable only those flash movies you really want to see - haven't seen ff3 crash since I started doing that.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[dotancohen]

3.1 is badly needed! Firefox 3.0 is crashing left and right. I guess they were too eager to get it out the door.

P.S: I don't have any add-ons installed.

On what OS? How much memory? What processor (and how overclocked is it?)? What else is crashing on your system? Please provide a link to the bugzilla report too. With no addons, this should be easy to diagnos.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[compro01]

Flash sites?

Only times I've had firefox 3 go down is on particular, badly made, flash-based sites, when trying to do specified things, which makes me fairly sure it's Adobe's fault.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[IamTheRealMike]

Which Ubuntu? If you didn't get FF3 from the repositories there are probably weird binary incompatibilities.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[pangloss]

I've been seeing this, too. Very annoying.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Cyvros]

I've used Vista for more than a year and also Firefox 3 for about a year (from pre-alphas to release) - with the exception of some Java- and Flash-wielding sites, Firefox hasn't crashed.

(Off-topic, but I can see this one coming - Vista hasn't, either. Also, Opera 9.5 crashed often, because I can see that one coming as well.)

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[steeviant]

Just type

apt-get remove libflashsupport; echo "I'm a `uname` noob"

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Jedi Alec]

Only times I've had firefox 3 go down is on particular, badly made, flash-based sites, when trying to do specified things, which makes me fairly sure it's Adobe's fault.

Hey, if we're blaming Bill for Windows going down because an app crashes, we can do the same for a browser that crashes when a plugin does something bad. If it really misbehaves FF should just kill the plugin, not die itself, shouldn't it?

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

The ubuntu devs are retarded, and they hate you. They released a new version of their OS a week before their developers conference so no-one would be available to fix bugs, they included a buggy pre-release version of Firefox 3 as the default browser and refused to provide any more updates until after the release of Firefox 3 final, and to top it off they included a version of flash that crashes on about every third flash video and have still failed to address the problem properly.

type...

sudo apt-get remove libflashsupport ...to remove the borked pulseaudio support. Flash will still work, but you might want to enable dmix or you'll only be able to play one sound at a time unless your card supports hardware mixing.

* posted as AC to avoid the backlash against my unbuntuness.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[baxissimo]

Crashes a lot for me too (WinXP).
Hopefully 3.1 will be better thanks to all the crash reports I've sent 'em!

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Fred_A]

Flash sites?

Only times I've had firefox 3 go down is on particular, badly made, flash-based sites, when trying to do specified things, which makes me fairly sure it's Adobe's fault.

It also seems to me that the latest Linux Flash release is much worse than the previous ones (which were pretty bad already). I don't know if Adobe replaced the Linux team or used new tools, but I hope the trend doesn't continue given the number of Flash tools being deployed online.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you hold the right mouse button down and then hover over an option before releasing it, then it will select the option. Maybe you've been doing this accidentally?

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Fred_A]

I do have add-ons installed and it hasn't crashed once. Aren't anecdotes fun?

Well, I know someone who hasn't installed it yet, but I'm pretty sure that if he did, it would crash. (upping your anecdote by one made up semi hear-say) :)

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[dotancohen]

Funny, you are not the first person to lick my ass to say that.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not talking about anecdotes here. We're talking about Firefox 3 repeatedly crashing for many users. It doesn't matter that it doesn't happen to you. What matters is that it does crash for other people. And that's unacceptable. I had to go back to using Safari because Firefox 3 would crash for me several times a day. Usually its memory usage would peak at over 1250 MB, and that was with just a base Firefox installation (no plugins beyond the default ones).

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[clickety6]

nope - the pop-up menu doesn't even appear even with the mouse button pressed continuously. It just picks an item to execute.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if it's Adobe's fault, why is it taking down the browser instead of just crashing on its own? (Flash does this sometimes in Opera on Linux for me).

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Hazelnut]

Pretty lame advice there Mr. AC.

hyades1, I also get a lot of crashes with FF3. Usually find it's crashed when I get into work in the morning. (I leave my work PC on overnight)

It actually took out an hours work on a company wiki page that I forgot to save before being distracted by other more urgent things. Next morning it was gone because FF3 had crashed. Quite ironic that the main reason for upgrading for me was that FF2 used to balloon to 1Gb+ after running for a couple of weeks so I had to restart it every few days... seems this is now automatic. ;-P

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using FF3 since beta 1 on XP, win2k, and linux. I've had one non-flash related crash, and that was in RC1. And since I installed adblock+, I haven't had any crashes at at all.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[aussie_a]

I'd say there's something wrong with your computer without actual evidence that Firefox crashes for a significant amount of people. Given how its worked flawlessly for me and many others.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[quantumphaze]

I have never had this happen to me. I use the Firegestures addon (adds mouse gestures) which uses right-click-drag and it may indirectly be fixing this.

Try it and see if it fixes it.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[EvilRyry]

Flash runs inside of the Firefox process. They die together. On a side note, I've been running Firefox 3 on 3 Ubuntu machines and a Windows machine without any crashes so far.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[clickety6]

Thanks. I'll give it a go, but the trouble is that the problem isn't so easy to replicate. I have one PC it happens on and one it doesn't- both XP - both Firefox 3 release - same ADD-ONs.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

All Flash sites are badly made.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

It crashes in yahoo mail and on godaddy.com 100%. All addins removed. I have switched back to IE and Safari.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[CrazedSanity]

I've installed several add-ons and it hasn't crashed for me, either. I thought it would be just as stable on any other OS, so I installed it on my mother's tablet (with M$ Vista), and it crashed almost immediately. Every once in a while, it'll randomly crash when I hit F6 (to highlight the URL), or when I first browse to a site. I would venture a guess, based upon my admittedly limited amount of experience on the matter, that the Windows version may have more instabilities than that of Linux... gosh, imagine that. ;)

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[theheadlessrabbit]

that sounds entirely plausible.

FF3 ALWAYS crashes on me when i go to youtube, and scroll down while the video is playing. this only happens on the second video i attempt to watch. that brings it down, every time.

i will try that out right now. i hope it fixes things. I really hope this works out better than that time i typed "sudo chmodd 777 / -r^^".

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[afidel]

XP is buggy (all non-trivial software is to varying degrees) but it is certainly not crashy. I have had installs of XP stay up for over a year with SP1 and SP2. People either have really crappy hardware with poorly written drivers or they install some crapware that makes their Windows installs so crash prone. Of course it's probably the OEM's fault with all the crud they load because I haven't run an OEM install of XP ever and I haven't seen the problems so many people report. I think the problems with FF are largely the same, it's not that the browser is crashy, it's the plugins and addons that people load. Unfortunately Flash is one of the worst offenders and it's basically required for many sites, I almost wish MS would open up Silverlight and win against flash.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[barometz]

The only issue I've had so far with all versions I've used (b5, rc2 and the release, both on windows and ubuntu) is that it doesn't always close cleanly, leaving an unresponsive process open. Other than that everything's shiny.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

My Firefox 3 is rock-stable with the following extensions enabled:

Application: Firefox 3.0 (2008052906)
Operating System: WINNT (x86-msvc)

- About Menu 1.2.8
- Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
- CustomizeGoogle 0.72
- Download Statusbar 0.9.6.3
- DownloadHelper 3.1
- DownThemAll! 1.0.3
- Extended Copy Menu 1.5
- Extension List Dumper 1.14.1
- FaviconizeTab 0.9.8.2
- FireFTP 0.99.1
- Fission 0.9.7.1
- Forecastbar Enhanced 0.9.6
- FxIF 0.2.3
- Gmail Notifier 0.6.3.4.1
- Gmail Space 0.5.94
- Google Notebook 1.0.0.20
- Googlepedia 0.5.3
- Image Zoom 0.3.1
- MeasureIt 0.3.8
- Menu Editor 1.2.6
- Minimap Sidebar Extension 0.2.6
- Nightly Tester Tools 2.0.2
- Password Exporter 1.1
- ReminderFox 1.7.2
- Searchbar Autosizer 1.3.8
- Split Browser 0.4.2008061601
- SQLite Manager 0.2.46
- Stylish 0.5.7
- Tab Scope 0.2.2.8
- URL Fixer 1.4.3
- User Agent Switcher 0.6.11
- Web Developer 1.1.6

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 on that, i have used it since RC1 in Windows XP and Ubuntu and no problems so far.

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[HJED]

I have only ever had FF3 crash when it receives an update and restarts but as long as I can restore my session i am happy

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[lab16]

Can you name/link-to the offending site?

Re:Firefox 3.0 is crash happy

[cparker15]

I've never had any issues with Konqueror. It's also lighting fast on my aging laptop compared to Firefox, which crawls and slows everything else down, too.

Why?

[arrenlex]

Is there a reason this update is happening so much more quickly than other transitions? Are they trying to overcome problems that FF3 introduced? Do they want to add some features that are close to completion, but got shelved?

Re:Why?

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

After reading the article (a novel concept for slashdot I know), the answer to both your questions is "Yes".

Re:Why?

[AceofSpades19]

Release early, Release often

Re:Why?

[Vectronic]

6 months isn't "quick", its only the Alpha in a month...that's about normal for most smaller software, especially for a point (*.1) update, this isn't Firefox 4.0.

Hell, Opera released 9.51 RC1 (now on RC2) just a few days after 9.5...

Its pretty normal as far as I see it, and I'm glad they are (or seem to be) returning to a more consistent release schedule, it may eventually become my default browser again, which it hasn't been since Phoenix.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 3 included large scale changes to the platform, the rendering engine, and all kinds of other stuff. Firefox 3.1 is just user-level features that didn't make the cut for Firefox 3. That way, the UI guys have something to do while the engine developers work on Gecko 2.

Re:Why?

[dotancohen]

After reading the article (a novel concept for slashdot I know), the answer to both your questions is "Yes".

Which both of his three questions?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

9.5 to 9.51 is a small revision patch
And is NOT comparable to 3.1 which is like between 9 and 9.5
equivalent to firefox 1.5
A single digit .0x is a small quick to release usually a bugfix or security update. .x is a major revision which takes a longer upgrade cycle.

The longest time between releases it a major overhaul +1.0

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

Firefox 3.1 is supposed to have feature changes though, Opera 9.51 merely bug fixes, more specifically a number of important crash fixes.

Re:Why?

[Vectronic]

I'm aware of that, what I meant was I hope they release revisions soon, forget about 3.1 which is months away, where is 3.02 or something...

IMHO, they fucked up with 2.0 because between 2.0 and 2.0.14 was...nothing, each patch fixed some, made an equivalent amount of new bugs.

I completely forgot about Firefox once it became Firefox, I was hopeful about 2.0 but, that was a letdown to the point where I didnt even bother installing it half the time.

3.0 looks promising, but it's got a lot to do before it drags me away from Opera now.

Re:Why?

[Junior J. Junior III]

That both.

Re:Why?

[emag]

Hell, Opera released 9.51 RC1 (now on RC2) just a few days after 9.5...

Already to RC3 today, according to http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/2286880

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which both of his three questions?

Both of three boths.

Can't blame them...

[RuBLed]

In every release, they would be given a cake.

Re:Can't blame them...

[Anonymous Coward]

The cake is a lie...

Re:Can't blame them...

[sapphire wyvern]

The cake is a lie...

I guess it just demonstrates the Microsoft IE team's development strategy.

You know...

"There's no use crying over every mIstakE,
We'll just keep on trying till we run out of cake!"

At least it isn't version 4

[tecker]

Im glad to see them coming out with a .1 release, it says that we are going to develop upon this platform and make it stable. I dont think they have done that since the pre 1.0 days. They called the first one 1.0 then 1.5 jumped to 2.0 and then rocketed to 3.0. So my question is: Why is this "simple" .1 upgrade going to take nearly 6 months? This is just getting the features they wanted in place for 3.0 but scrapped do to time, i thought. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Re:At least it isn't version 4

[BenoitRen]

Pre-1.0 development was much faster and more Gecko releases were pushed out the door. Firefox 0.8 was based on Gecko 1.6, Firefox 1.0 was based on Gecko 1.7.

Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 uses the same platform: Gecko 1.8. It's the same case with 3.0 and 3.1, only with Gecko 1.9.

Don't trust Firefox version numbers. They're just toys to the Firefox developers. Gecko is where it's at.

And after Firefox 3.1

[NovaHorizon]

Comes Firefox 95!

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[NitroWolf]

Comes Firefox 95!

Nope, it will be 3.11 and FWG... THEN we can get to 95, though I'm probably going to wait until FF98 if past experience is a guide.

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[NovaHorizon]

yea.. but saying 3.11 in my post would have ruined the joke.. I had it in there on my first preview though.. :P

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe it's gonna take THAT long...
On the other hand, if it's going to come with paint and minesweeper I say: go for it!

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember to stay the hell away from Firefox ME.

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[speilberg0]

just make sure to jump ship before FFME comes out

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[compro01]

I dunno about paint, but we've got minesweeper.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1049

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[mysticgoat]

3.11

That was the best! The very pinnacle of that particular OS! Then it went increasingly downhill. Sometimes in a thrilling sort of way, like a rollercoaster goes downhill.
</reminisce>

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that wont be so bad.. It's "Firefox ME" we gotta be careful about.

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[jollyreaper]

And after Firefox 3.1 comes Firefox 95!

DO NOT WANT!!!!!

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

And maybe Firefox for Workgroups 3.11 in between!

Re:And after Firefox 3.1

[BenoitRen]

Nah. Firefox 95 will be great, actually working when it comes out without bloat and unnecessary eye candy. The OSR2 release will be even better. Then we get Firefox 98 with an additional browser rammed in that makes for a crash-happy, glitchy version. It will be mostly fixed in Firefox 98 Second Edition.

Re:Cake?

[ya really]

At this rate, Microsoft better start working on the next cake!

MSIE developers already figured out the cake is a lie long ago.

What's after Firefox 3.1?

[suck_burners_rice]

Right now it's Firefox 3.0 and soon we'll have Firefox 3.1. What's planned beyond that?

Firefox 3.11 for Workgroups
Firefox 95, then 95b, then 95c.
Firefox NT
Firefox 98, then Firefox 98SE
Firefox Me
Firefox 2000
Firefox XP
Firefox Vista
Firefox 7

Then someone will come up with a new program, which will be a "browser-only" browser!!

Nah, just kidding. Don't take it seriously. :-)

Re:What's after Firefox 3.1?

[dotancohen]

Nah, just kidding. Don't take it seriously. :-)

Fuck, and I was already registering the domain names to squat...

Re:What's after Firefox 3.1?

[cparker15]

Don't forget Firefox CE. Before you know it, someone will port it to the Xbox.

There is no such thing as a quick Firefox release.

[Cochonou]

Firefox 2.0 was also supposed to be a quick development, based on the same gecko branch. It eventually took about a year.
I think the past record of Mozilla.org has repeatedly shown that it is unable to release a product on time, given the huge amount of testing/fixing iterations that must come before the final release. A Firefox "quick release" will take time, and divert resources from important future projects such as Gecko 2.
I would have thought Mozilla.org would have finally admitted that the architecture and development model of Firefox is characterised by long maturation times. This is needed to keep up its high quality level.

Schedule has slipped before

[Anders]

Of course, at one time, Firefox 3 was targeted for a Q3 2007 release.

Re:Schedule has slipped before

[hansamurai]

And quickly reading through that list of planned features I don't think they implemented a single one. Of course FF3 was a big improvement over FF2 in my book so I'm not complaining.

Anonymous?

[aptenergy]

Seriously, the whole summary is lifted straight from the original article at ComputerWorld:


http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1914870647;fp;16;fpid;1

Of course, this same article has been repeated across tons of blogs and other news sites. But come on.

Re:Anonymous?

[aptenergy]

Bleh, oops. Next time, I should actually CTFL. Well, mod away....

Re:Anonymous?

[dotancohen]

Seriously, the whole summary is lifted straight from the original article at ComputerWorld

You wouldn't know that if you didn't read the fucking article, noob.

End users don't want constant change

[syousef]

There's a reason IE6 is entrenched.

There's also a reason why some users stuck with Firefox 2.0. I was going to until I managed to regain control over the address bar with the oldbar and hide unvisted extensions. In fact if the fucking address bar evolves any further or if those extensions get blocked I'm going to move to another browser. Change for the sake of change is not good.

Now significant new features, which can be controlled without adding extensions? That I'd love to see. However it seems current Firefox policy is to ignore the end user and limit their options using the excuse that you don't want to clutter the options dialogs.

For me, Firefox ain't the shiny magic browser it once was. Years of memory bugs, extensions that require updating on every release, minor features breaking and now this maddness with the interface have soured me to it. I'll still keep using it until something better comes along but I'm no longer excited about new releases.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[SEE]

Hell, who needs options dialogs? about:config options would be good enough.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

People getting bent out of shape about the address bar is simply absurd. While I admit, the option to turn it off should appear somewhere, if only in about:config, the development team isn't ignoring it's users. I have a feeling far more people LIKE the new address bar than dislike it. I certainly find it very useful at times. I also happen to find the new user interface to be well thought out and designed.

The "it's only one option in the config dialog" argument is wearing a bit thin. It also demonstrates a lack of understanding on what testing is required for even simple options. Perhaps terms like "decision coverage" and "condition/decision coverage" are meaningless to you, but they are quite important to software testers. Also important is the psychological concept of the paradox of choice in which many people will not make a choice if presented with too many options. I really am quite sick of hearing, "But it's just one little check box in the option dialog." Take a second and think about how many features that has been said about. Then take a second to consider how much your really now about good user interface design and how much research is done in the area of human/computer interaction.

The changes presented in Firefox 3.0 are actually quite minor when compared to other UI modifications such as Office 2007 or KDE 4. Such drastic language on your part is quite uncalled for. The changes presented in Firefox's front end are, in fact, not for the sake of change but rather for the sake of improvement. I hope comments like yours don't encourage the developers to stagnate on a single UI design because every time they work to improve it, a vocal minority of rigid people can't pull a stick out of their ass.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[syousef]

It's pure garbage. I cannot believe that people defend having the address bar randomly pick through your bookmarks and display them in kindergarten writing - 2 lines each no less.

Office 2007 is another Kindergarten interface. I haven't got much experience with KDE4.

Change for the sake of change isn't good, especially when the changes are negative.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Antique Geekmeister]

The new option bar is a cluttered mess we're going to have to live with, much like the Vista interface.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[dlevitan]

I have a feeling far more people LIKE the new address bar than dislike it.

I'm one of the people who, for the most part, really likes the new address bar. Being able to type in a site's title to get to the url is a great time saver for me. However, there is one thing I can't stand about it, which is that sometimes it takes a second or two for it to load (especially if I'm on battery power and the hard drive is spun down) and in the meantime firefox freezes. If they could just sort that problem out I'd be very happy.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Jugalator]

Speak for yourself instead of using the word "we".

Re:End users don't want constant change

[ikkonoishi]

I just wish it would stop crashing every time I start it until I restart my computer. Even does it in (firefox) safe mode. I want to downgrade back to 2.0, but the download on their ftp does not seem to work.

The "awesome bar" is pretty nice, and I can't see that it is any more difficult to use versus the old urlbar. I really have never gotten a clear answer on how the new one is worse than the old one. I've seen some complaints about how typing "w" now gets a bunch of useless results due to "www", but you can easily avoid that by typing ".w" to get sites that start with a W. If you want to make a more complex search just hit the space button and type in another term.

It would be nice if the dev team would add some meta commands to let us change the behavior. Things like a regex match or ways to order the results by the last visited page or something, but thats a reason for the to just add features not to go back to the way it was.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[ikkonoishi]

Try playing around with "browser.urlbar.search.chunkSize" and "browser.urlbar.search.timeout" in about:config. The prefs file says this about it.

// Size of "chunks" affects the number of places to process between each search // timeout (ms). Too big and the UI will be unresponsive; too small and we'll // be waiting on the timeout too often without many results.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kindergarten interface" is probably the most subjective complaint possible on the matter and last time I checked, kindergartners don't write in a sans serif font face. If you're referring to multiple colors, there is scientific research to support such a change, but then again you consider research to be garbage so I don't see you taking much stock in that.

It's also interesting how you reiterate "Change for the sake of change isn't good" with no new content despite that very point having been dealt with in the parent (repeating the same point verbatim is not actually a rebuttal). Despite what you may think, you have not successfully argued that these changes were made for the sake of change (they were not, any such statement is clearly ignorant and closed minded) or that the changes were actually negative. All you've done is described why YOU don't like it in the vaguest possible terms you could manage. I assure you, you are a minority and a small one at that.

While I don't have a problem with your personal taste in web browsers, I do find your critiques to be more of insults rather than critiques. If you don't like Firefox 3, that's fine, but making ignorant statements is a hard position to defend. I challenge you to provide actual evidence that suggests the user interface in Firefox was changed solely for the sake of change.

Just to be technical, there is an algorithm for what to display based on what you have typed. It is anything but random.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[clickety6]

People get "bent out of shape" because something that worked well for them has been taken away and replaced with something that (for them) works less well, is less intuitive (when I'm in a URL entry box, I don't expect to have searches on titles), looks awful (that two line layout is not nice to read, despite having pretty colours) and does not allow a return to old functionality. If "awesome bar" had been an option, then there wouldn't be a fuss. But the developers seem to have decided they know what is best for the users and because they have made this great new thing it should be shoved down their users' throats. Last time I had this happen to me was Clippy - but at least you could turn that wonderful new functionality off!

As we can customise the interface, the awesome bar could exist alongside the address bar so that you could drag one or the other into your interface to use.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[sirambrose]

I generally like the new address bar. When I need to get back to a page that I recently visited and didn't bookmark, the history search is very handy. The only annoying part about the new design is that it strongly favors recently and frequently accessed pages. Favoring the most recently and frequently accessed page makes little sense when the top few options are very frequently accessed. In this case I would prefer the top results to be ordered by best match and not based on insignificant differences in frequency and last access time. For example, typing 'go' into the address bar should always bring up google.com as the first suggestion, not news.google.com or mail.google.com. As firefox works now, typing 'go' will always suggest the last google site I visited, which is not useful to me. I think that lots of the people who complain about the new features of the address bar would be happy if the search algorithm gave a boost to sites with domain names that begin with the search text.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, asshole? The option was in about config, and they fucking removed it.

See here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=407836

It's a case of Mozilla, as usual, actively ignoring their users because some fag wanted to strip six lines of javascript to get his name in the credits.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

People claiming the new address bar is no big deal are simply absurd.

I don't know squat about user interface design, but I know a great deal about common sense, and I know from my own experience as a user that the new "awesome" bar is an unusable disaster. As a frequent user of, say, Yahoo, who routinely types Yahoo in the address bar, I expect that the first suggestion when I type the letter y in the address bar should be Yahoo, like it was in version 2, rather than bringing up a dozen pages from my ancient history that happen to have the letter y buried somewhere in the middle of their URL or page title. If this usability trend continues, version 3.1 will have Clippy pop up and say "Looks like you typed the letter Y! Is that because you want to visit http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/do_something.pl?request=search&session_id=27ghapg80zy87344 (yes/no)?", which as you can see does plainly contain the letter y and is therefore an excellent candidate for the page I probably wanted. The sad thing is, except for the Clippy part, this is literally not an exaggeration of what the "awesome" bar already does.

I also don't know about "decision coverage", but again I know about common sense, and I know that being able to opt out of an extremely controversial new feature is a good idea, and hiding behind the paradox of choice is a piss-poor excuse for forcing something down users' throats that many of them loathe. I know that the old address bar didn't need any testing because it already worked perfectly. And I know that Firefox has lost its way from its original goal of being the streamlined no-frills browser where people who wanted stuff like the awesome bar could opt in by adding them as extensions, rather than bloating the main program with non-essential features and not even letting people opt out. This is not the result of usability research, this is the result of arrogance.

If it weren't for the "Old Location Bar" extension, I'd be looking for a different browser.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[bcrowell]

People getting bent out of shape about the address bar is simply absurd.

Thanks for sharing your opinion that other people's opinions are absurd. I think your opinion that our opinion is absurd is absurd. Aren't opinions great?

While I admit, the option to turn it off should appear somewhere, if only in about:config[...]

That's all we're asking for.

the development team isn't ignoring it's users.

Yes they are. Many of us users hate the annoying bar, and they're ignoring our requests to provide a way to get rid of its annoying behavior via about:config.

I have a feeling far more people LIKE the new address bar than dislike it.

I have a feeling that more people want to elect me president than Obama or McCain. Unfortunately I have no hard data to back up my feeling.

I certainly find it very useful at times.

I'm very happy for you. If they would give us a choice, your choice would presumably be to leave it set to the default behavior.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm not whoever you originally wrote your response to...)

My only (brief) experience with the so-called 'awesomebar' lasted only about 15 minutes, just enough time to realize that it was making my life harder, that it was't possible to simply shut it off, and then to replace the ff3 packages with ff2 ones. Personally I'm not all that upset with the change, it's happened many times before with other software/websites/etc. I just hope that security updates will be provided for a long time (I haven't checked) or at least if/until a version of ff3 comes out sans awesomebar, or a better alternative to firefox itself. I won't be sold on the whole 'for the sake of improvement' argument either, or I'd be typing this using a Dvorak keyboard on Vista.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Toonol]

People getting bent out of shape about the address bar is simply absurd. While I admit, the option to turn it off should appear somewhere, if only in about:config, the development team isn't ignoring it's users. I have a feeling far more people LIKE the new address bar than dislike it. I certainly find it very useful at times. I also happen to find the new user interface to be well thought out and designed.

The current about:config does not have the ability to revert the bar to its previous behavior. It gives a few options to reign it in a little, make it behave a little more like it traditionally (and, dare I say, sensibly) should. The thing that irritates me the most is that, in earlier versions of the 3.0 beta releases, there was a config option to completely revert to previous behavior. Why in God's name remove that option?

It feels like a real push from the designers to try to make everybody use their new feature. That's a push that good features shouldn't need. There are already add-ins that take care of much of the problem, though, and I'm sure they'll get better within the next few months.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Firefox 3.1 will let us use the old address bar and bookmarks.html again. Firefox 2 will be supported until 3.1 comes out so I'll just keep using it till then. If the address bar and bookmarks.html don't return then I'll switch to SeaMonkey 2 which will be out before then and have an updated gui. I hear that SeaMonkey is faster than Firefox anyway.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[cynyr]

I for one find that small "minor" changed to a UI are harder to deal with. to use your examples of Office 2007 and kde4; Office 2007, i expect nothing to be where it was in 2003 because it looks nothing like 2003, so I look where i think it should be not where I would expect it in 2003 (hope that made sense). As for KDE4, being a long time gnome/xfce user the switch to kde alone is a UI change, but the above logic still holds true, it looks like nothing I am familiar with.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the awesome bar has even spurred you to abandon intelligent debate and resort to petty name calling. You're what, 15...16 years old?

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logical fallacies abound. Your use of straw man arguments are astounding.

Your example of a feeling that people would prefer you as president and comparison to a feeling that most Firefox users like the awesome bar is patently absurd. All you have done is constructed a straw man argument thus detracting from the real debate at hand. There has been a great deal of feed back in support of the awesome bar which suggests that the majority of users do appreciate it.

So far, all I've read in this thread from outright haters of the awesome bar amounts to "I don't like it." Of course, the actual complaints are far more irrational and childish. No constructive criticism, and many people, not you, have resorted the rather unintelligent debate such as ad hominen attacks. Others have actually provided critiques such as Firefox hangs or the results aren't useful. If you want the option back to disable the awesome bar, you should probably TELL THE FIREFOX DEVELOPMENT TEAM! Maybe it's just me, but that seems to be a far more rational and intelligent option. If they receive intelligent and polite feedback directly, they will, in all likelihood, reinstate the option. Complaints sprinkled with expletives and insults about how the devs ignore their user base are highly unlikely to have any positive impact and are far more likely to get ignored for good reason. With some of the more irrational comments, it's fairly obvious that these people are just opposed to change and are advocating for stagnation. "YOU CHANGED SOMETHING! HOW DARE YOU NOT ASK MY PERMISSION!"

I certainly believe the option should be available to turn off the new feature, but just because this one option is missing does not in any way support the claim that the dev team is ignoring its user base. I'd be curious to see if people claiming that actually knew anything about the decision process to remove that option or if they're just jumping to conclusions.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[BenoitRen]

Sounds like you'd like SeaMonkey quite a bit.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I can't even begin to understand how the awesome bar would even remotely qualify as an "extremely controversial new feature". Switching to the Trident rendering engine would be something that would qualify as "extremely controversial" in this context. Your argument lacks perspective.

Your argument about common sense is also extremely unbalanced. Software design must incorporate many aspects and user interface is but one of many competing aspects. When designing software it is important to not only consider the user interface, but the code complexity introduced by options. The paradox of choice is NOT an excuse at all. It is a valid issue that must be considered. It is by no means arrogant to try new features. You also don't have any substantive proof that the omission of the option is in anyway arrogant. What point of the decision process is specifically arrogant? Did the devs at some point say, "We know what's best for our users, so lets force the awesome bar on them without a choice."? I'd be curious to hear from you about what specifically from this particular decision process led you to believe this option was omitted due to arrogance. Your assumptions in this matter are somewhat short sighted.

Your most legitimate argument is about Firefox not being a bare bones browser anymore. I happen to agree with you, but software projects can change their design goals over time, and if you recall, the Mozilla suite was/is far larger than Firefox 3 is. Another legitimate argument of yours is the complaint about the results returned by the new address bar. Why don't you provide feedback to the dev team? Firefox is an open source project; they do welcome your feedback. Also, providing feedback that you want the option to turn it off would also go a long way to getting that option back. Imagine if everyone here complaining about the lack of the option were to actually submit feedback.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[syousef]

"Kindergarten interface" is probably the most subjective complaint possible

By "Kindergarten interface" I mean bright with big colours, made so a child could understand what's on the screen but hiding, making less accessible, or removing useful features that an adult using the product for serious work would want to see.

last time I checked, kindergartners don't write in a sans serif font face.

Last time I checked AC posters on /. were arrogant condescending prats.

If you're referring to multiple colors, there is scientific research to support such a change, but then again you consider research to be garbage so I don't see you taking much stock in that.

No, if you must use clown colours, go for it, though I have to doubt the value of doing thtat. I'm referring to moving from a tried and true familiar interface, to one where options are hidden or removed making the product less useful and requiring retraining.

It's also interesting how you reiterate "Change for the sake of change isn't good" with no new content despite that very point having been dealt with in the parent (repeating the same point verbatim is not actually a rebuttal).

It's also interesting how you attempt to discredit everything I say with a new straw man or similar misdirection. Re-stating one's position for emphasis does not invalidate the point.

All you've done is described why YOU don't like it in the vaguest possible terms you could manage.

I'm sure I could manage vaguer. Could you manage to be more condescending or dismissive? I think not!

While I don't have a problem with your personal taste in web browsers, I do find your critiques to be more of insults rather than critiques. If you don't like Firefox 3, that's fine, but making ignorant statements is a hard position to defend.

I made no ignorant statements whatsoever. You write like a politician. You say "If you don't like Firefox 3, that's fine" but you qualify it with words to the effect that it's not fine unless I shut up and keep it to myself.

Finally why post as AC? Is there something you're embarassed of here? Perhaps you wouldn't want such a childish attitude associated with your name?

and some knob modded this trash as insightful.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[syousef]

I really have never gotten a clear answer on how the new one is worse than the old one. I've seen some complaints about how typing "w" now gets a bunch of useless results due to "www", but you can easily avoid that by typing ".w" to get sites that start with a W

Oh yeah, typing .w is real intuitive. Don't see a problem there at all *rolls eyes*

Here's why it's worse.

- The old address bar worked just fine, and searched only my history. If I wished to remove everything I'd just need to clear my history.

- I don't want bookmarks being searched. I don't want my wife knowing that I've been searching for eternity rings for her at jewellery sites/stores. I don't need my friends knowing which bank i use. I don't need the local news website being displayed for my boss every time I type something into the address bar, as if to say all I ever do is goof off and look at these sites. When I mention this people automatically assume I bookmark porn. I personally have never bookmarked porn for a variety of reasons. However I know there are others that do, and that this has actually contributed to the proliferation of the Internet. Whether or not you agree with them doing so, they should not have their right to keep those bookmarks private overridden by some Firefox developer's sense of what the address bar should look like.

- The new address bar is inefficient. The old address bar just showed addresses. Most addresses I have visited or bookmarked I recognise and do not require 2 lines with an explanation of each site. If this were a default I could turn off as an advanced user, I'd say it would only be a small move backwards but...

- ...it requires 2 extensions to turn off the new functionality and as I understand it it's a bit of a hack. It shouldn't be that hard to get back what worked well in the previous browser version. I have a real problem with developers deciding for me what I should and shouldn't be allowed to do in a new version of software. I have a problem with good useful features being replaced even when many users object.

So please stop telling us how you don't understand why people take issue with the new bar. If you don't agree with the above points, or you don't feel they affect you that's one thing, but stop deciding for others what should and shouldn't bother them.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Antique Geekmeister]

I think it's a cluttered mess, as do some others. Those others, me, and everybody else, are going to have to live with it. I think that is enough to justify a 'we' there: do you really disagree?

Part of why it's a mess is that the option bar pulldown function is overly large and tends to go to lengthy, recent URL's instead of site URL's. This debris can clutter a screen quite a lot. The ordering and size of the bar also makes its use awkward when sites have complex URL's identifying specific and potentially hazardous to repeat operations. It's also cluttered by the 'favicon.ico' URL at many sites, which is not helpful at all. Even for simple sites like webcomics, previous day's URL's seem to be frequently listed ahead of the main site URL.

So yes, it's cluttered.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked AC posters on /. were arrogant condescending prats.

You mean, much like yourself.

I'm referring to moving from a tried and true familiar interface, to one where options are hidden or removed making the product less useful and requiring retraining.

So just to be clear, you're arguing against any change what so ever unless there is a clear defect in the code. You might want to stick with old software that releases only maintenance updates.

It's also interesting how you attempt to discredit everything I say with a new straw man or similar misdirection. Re-stating one's position for emphasis does not invalidate the point.

Not a straw man argument in sight. I pointed out how you reiterated what you said previously verbatim, which had no substance of any sort. While repeating for emphasis may not invalidate a point, your point was already invalid.

I'm sure I could manage vaguer. Could you manage to be more condescending or dismissive? I think not!

Could you manage to be more condescending or dismissive of the developers opinions or their efforts? Maybe, just maybe, they got a lot of good feedback about the new address bar. Why don't you try and figure out why there is no option to turn it off instead of just assuming they're trying to dick you over.

I made no ignorant statements whatsoever. You write like a politician. You say "If you don't like Firefox 3, that's fine" but you qualify it with words to the effect that it's not fine unless I shut up and keep it to myself.

That's not at all what I said. Nice ad hominem attack by the way. Your belligerent argument provided no usable information that could be used to perhaps improve Firefox 3. Your argument is also based on assumption as opposed to real understanding.

Finally why post as AC? Is there something you're embarassed of here? Perhaps you wouldn't want such a childish attitude associated with your name?and some knob modded this trash as insightful.

You accuse me of resorting to straw man arguments while you use a non-sequitor. Me posting as a anonymous coward has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. It is entirely irrelevant. Furthermore, you are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions about why I'm posting as anonymous. Did it ever occur to you that I don't feel the need to even HAVE a slashdot account? There are, in fact, any number of reasons why a person might not have a slashdot account or bother to get one. Or perhaps it didn't occur to you that just because someone has a account doesn't mean you know anything about who they are. As far as I'm concerned you are as anonymous as I am. I have no idea what your real name is, where you live, or what sort of position you have in society, nor do I care. And just for the record, calling me childish is outright two faced and hypocritical. It really is a shame you couldn't stick to the discussion at hand and instead decided to attack me personally rather than my argument.

Just for your own edification, several "knob"s modded my arguments insightful.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[syousef]

I said:
I'm referring to moving from a tried and true familiar interface, to one where options are hidden or removed making the product less useful and requiring retraining.

You responded:
So just to be clear, you're arguing against any change what so ever unless there is a clear defect in the code.

Either your lack of comprehension is astounding, or you're just trolling. You simply can't go from what I said to your interpretation using any form of honest logic. The rest of your message is more of the same. As for your "good feedback" about the address bar, there are pages of complaints and 2 shiny new extensions to turn it off that show up what you say as a complete nonsense. You are either a Firefox developer in disguise, or more likely a fanboi.

Either way, I've concluded replying to your tripe trolling crap is a complete waste of my time. The challenge isn't to come up with a persuasive argument - it's too counter every purposeful misinterpretation you can come up with. No thanks. Have a nice life, don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, and enjoy the validation that being modded up seems to give you.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Just Some Guy]

when I'm in a URL entry box, I don't expect to have searches on titles

Short answer: it's not a URL entry box anymore.

Re:End users don't want constant change

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: I'm not the AC you're replying to, I'm the AC who wrote http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=600187&cid=24014999 .

THANK YOU for saying so perfectly to this troll what I wanted to say but was too exasperated!

You hit the nail on the head: this guy is either so single-minded and blind to what's in front of him that he can't be reasoned with, or he has an agenda and is deliberately misinterpreting everything you (and I) say to him.

Anonymous?

[aussie_a]

The person who wrote this summary has a name. It's Gregg Keizer.

Very high CPU usage

[slashuzer]

I have been using Firefox 3.0 with a new profile, but I have observed that it has absurdly high CPU usage.

For example, if I open just three tabs of slashdot, the usage jumps to 85-99% territory (and stays there even after the pages have stopped loading), and the computer starts locking up. Only two extensions too, adblock and flashblock.

Does anyone know what the hell is going on, and how to get this CPU usage to manageable 10% levels. I don't recall the exact number, but I do not think that the 2.xx ever got that high.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[Spy Handler]

I have no idea what's going on with your comp, but on my 3 year old Athlon LAPTOP with 512mb RAM, I'm getting 0 to 4% CPU usage with 3 tabs of Slashdot open. When I move the mouse around it jumps to 8%.

That's lower than IE7.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[risk one]

Try installing flashblock. Those ads tend to steal a lot of cycles. Worked for me anyway.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[dreamchaser]

From GP: Only two extensions too, adblock and flashblock.

Reading is fundamental.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Well debug the problem -- disable the addons and see if that fixes it. Then check memory usage and try increasing about:config's browse.cache.memory.capacity by 50% and see if that fixes it. Etc.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[deek]

I see something similar as well. I use linux and Firefox 3 on my work laptop, and at home while browsing www.smh.com.au, cpu will hit 100% and the browser becomes barely usable.

Interestingly enough, at work, I can browse www.smh.com.au without any issues.

I noticed that the stop button is clickable during the 100% cpu periods. When I click it, and it eventually registers, the cpu usage plummets back to regular levels.

I suspect there's some DNS shenanigans going on, because the DNS service at home can be flaky, and I noticed "looking for" like messages in the Firefox status bar. Firefox 3 most likely burns the cycles in some polling loop when waiting for responses to DNS requests.

Anyway, that's my theory. It's strange though, that only one site manages to trigger the behaviour for me.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[Ravadill]

Adblock with large filtersets tends to bog down on slashdot because the sheer amount of text/code it has to work through on each page (especially with the new comment system enabled) try disabling adblock to see if it helps.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[jez9999]

He's using Linux. OSS always works better in Windows. :-P

Re:Very high CPU usage

[maxume]

Not reading comments is what comes after not reading the article.

The final step is to not even read your own comments.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[smoker2]

I get "a script on this page is taking a long time to complete"
Cancel | Wait
Every time I visit slashdot, and this is in Firefox 2.0.0.14 on FC4.
The beta of FF3 running on the other (FC9) machine is fine, no crashes.

Re:Very high CPU usage

[slashuzer]

Hello, I have finally found a cure for this annoying problem!

Just go to about:config, then set the "browser.cache.memory.enable" to False (yeah, sounds counterproductive, I know). I also disabled smooth-scrolling while I was at it.

Now Firefox 3 is as fast as can be, even on heavy flash sites. Cheers guys!!

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[Matthieu Araman]

I don't think you're right.
During Fx3, tons of regression tests were added.
So it's becoming less risky to change something and do a release.
By doing a time based release this year (or most realistic sometimes in the beginning of 2009), it lower the pressure to get a feature in "this big major version".
They have also changed from cvs to mercurial so hopefully having experimental branch in parallel will be easier.
I hope to see the html 5 video support added for Fx3.1

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[trawg]

I'm passing up the opportunity to moderate you as 'troll' despite your obvious troll post on the basis that maybe, just maybe, you have some evidence to back up those statements. I'm not sure what bugs you're talking about but I use Firefox all day long every single day and very rarely have any problems.

I also use an application (MediaCoder) that I believe uses the XUL parts of Firefox seemingly without any problems (other than annoying load times for what should really be a simple control panel thing).

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

I hope to see the html 5 video support added for Fx3.1

You're almost certainly going to get it, with Ogg Theora support at the very least (a DirectShow backend for Windows, QuickTime backend for Mac OS X, and GStreamer backend for Linux are also in the works). But the real question that no one seems to be asking is, where is HTML 5 audio support? It's just as much a part of the specification, and Ogg Vorbis is well-known enough that corporate entities aren't so worried about patents. I've seen some work on it recently, but I'm not sure it's mature enough to make the deadline. HTML 5 audio and video support in Firefox 3.1 would be a dream though. Safari already has at least some support for both, and Opera has partial support for audio with video surely not far off. Internet Explorer is obviously going to take a long time to catch up, but I guess we can't have everything...

What about that zero-day?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/First-critical-security-hole-in-Firefox-3--/110959
Fx 3.0 (and previous. 2.0.x versions) contain a flaw that lets "Attackers [...] inject malicious code into a PC by means of a crafted web site, and launch the code with the user's rights." Does anybody know whether this is going to be fixed in 3.1, or earlier, or if it's kept secret when it is going to be fixed or already is fixed?

Re:What about that zero-day?

[BrentH]

It's actually put in there by the Mozilla devs because they have this plan for world domination. So you bet that hole will be there in FF3.1 and every FF after that! They need to control your computer someho, don't they?

3.0 [Iceweasel for Debian] still not final...

[tyrione]

in Sid, nor Experimental. There are some issues still needin to be resolved.

I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Futurepower(R)]

"Well, I can dream, can't I?"

I dream of a Firefox that doesn't have CPU hogging problems. Firefox 3 seems to be a little worse than the previous version.

For those of us who open a lot of windows and tabs and leave them open a long time, as when doing research, Firefox is a hassle. It slows the entire computer until all windows and tabs are closed.

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Not only is crashing a hassle, it is fatal.

30 tabs open of articles and search results, and poof. You wake up in the morning, and your open windows are gone. With FF2 I didn't need it so I had crash recovery turned off, but now it is a must.

I hope the FF team realizes how crucial stability is. Anything else is a far second.

FF2 would slow down, but at least you'd could react. FF3 just dies and takes down the castle with it.

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your plugins are the problem - I've been running vanilla FF since 1.x on a myriad of computers, and I've never had it crash inappropriately (if I use it to do open a file it shouldn't be opening, etc). Or, try running it with a different process priority (how this is done varies from OS to OS).

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Candid88]

That's the main reason why I use Opera. I often have a dozen or more tabs left open for hours on end.

Firefox does occasionally crash randomly after a couple of hours or start consuming ridiculous amounts of RAM. Opera on the other hand carries on happily no matter how many tabs I have open for however long.

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's not the flash advertisements in your open tabs?

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it even still does it, but if it does, then it's WAY less than Firefox 2 did.
Quickest browser I've had yet.

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[HJED]

FF3 runs much faster then FF2 on my computer and is probably one of the faster programs i use

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I've noticed is that flash plug-in uses lots of CPU power on some flash ads. Before noticing this, I used to complain about FF3 CPU usage, but after I've installed flash block add-on the problem is gone. Maybe same is for you. Just a hint :)

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who open a lot of windows and tabs and leave them open a long time, as when doing research, Firefox is a hassle. It slows the entire computer until all windows and tabs are closed.

You mean "For some of us". I've yet to have a crash with FF3, and I currently have 109 tabs open with a record of 220. CPI usage and memory usage is greatly improved from FF2, especially memory. 30 or 40 tabs were enough to drive memory usage up to over a gig, but FF3 never goes above 500mb now, and is quicker to switch to non-recently used tabs.

However, I do have adblock, so I agree with the previous repliers that it's probably too much flash.

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[thetoadwarrior]

Your computer must suck. Every day over lunch I end up having about 20 tabs open plus Lotus notes and any sort of combination of Dreamweaver, eclipse, photoshop, etc. and this computer isn't even naer top spec. My home computer is even older and I've had no issues.

Perhaps I just know how to take care of my computer more than others. ;)

Re:I wish they would fix the CPU hogging bug.

[Nicolay77]

That's a non issue with Opera.

You reopen the browser and even the browsing history of each tab is there. It's not about how much memory you use but about how you use it.

WHAT?

[nx6310]

So more add-on incompatibility?! I want my Develpers Add-on to work again, not another!?

Re:WHAT?

[jez9999]

I know this was modded funny, but it's a genuine problem. They should try to increment the revision, not the minor version number, because most extensions are compatible with FF 3.0.* - revision increments are supposed to not break the APIs - whereas a minor version increment will suddenly cause all non-updated extensions to get disabled once again. Not good. Especially with Firefox's overly-aggressive update mechanism, ensuring virtually everyone will quickly switch to 3.1.

OS Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one little thing bugging me with FF3, and I hope it's going to be adressed in this next release. It's about the OS integration they promised... Sure, HTML forms now us the OS form controls properly, but most of the time it gets them wrong when used in combination with the color force feature in FF (allowing you to set your own colors for webpages, overwriting CSS. It's very useful for visually-impaired people like me who are easily blinded by light).

Basically, and on some webpages only, FF3 doesn't overwrite all CSS elements anymore, and you find yourself with strange things like black fonts on black-background text boxes. And I thought this kind of bug was only on some badly written Windows apps...

Re:OS Integration

[laffer1]

OS Integration? How about OS support. Firefox 3 is a real pain in the ass on non winodws/mac/linux systems.

Just kick flash out

[DrYak]

Just kick out the damn buggy Adobe Flash plug-in.
It runs in the same process as Firefox :
It eats to much memory, slows too much the browser, and take the whole browser down with it.

Either disable it, or at least use adblock+ and noscript to avoid having 80 flash widgets running inside your 30 tabs.

Re:Just kick flash out

[atamido]

Either disable it, or at least use adblock+ and noscript to avoid having 80 flash widgets running inside your 30 tabs.

What you want is FlashBlock.

Re:Just kick flash out

[Tubal-Cain]

Does Gnash suffer from the same issues?

Re:Just kick flash out

[Anonymous Coward]

Bang on. I regularly have about 80 or more tabs open and many a time firefox would consume more than 50% processing cycles on my box(Core 2 Duo based). This led me to using Privoxy and the improvement is remarkable. Now a days firefox consumes 1% or less processing cycles with 80 or more tabs open.

On occasions when Privoxy screws up layouts of some web pages and I am forced to disable proxy on firefox, I go back to square one. CPU usage goes back to more than 50% in no time.

Flash is the main suspect here too

[DrYak]

haven't seen ff3 crash since I started doing that.

Same behaviour observed here.

In addition the parent might be interested in installing Adblock+ (to block all flash ads) and maybe give a try to Gnash (opensource reimplementation of flash - it's still buggy, but at least it runs in a separate process and doesn't take the whole browser down).

<video> and DOM

[GNUPublicLicense]

Hope that in this alpha release we will have the element with the DOM minimal media player! Because, the main video sites will have to provide beta testing quickly for that player: finally the video for the web!

Yes, faster, but the CPU hogging bug is there.

[Futurepower(R)]

It's faster, yes. But it still has the CPU hogging bug. Eventually, that makes everything slower.

Re:Yes, faster, but the CPU hogging bug is there.

[Goaway]

Once again, are you sure that's not just Flash?

Re:Yes, faster, but the CPU hogging bug is there.

[Sigma 7]

I've had a CPU hogging issue with Firefox 3.0, and no, it wasn't flash.

I use two computers - a desktop and a notebook. My desktop still runs Firefox 2.0 (and it's beginning to crash a bit too frequently for my tastes), and my notebook runs Firefox 3.0. I export the bookmarks from my desktop, and import them onto the laptop. If I ran Firefox 2.0, it would be done very quickly (10 seconds maximum). However, Firefox 3.0 takes 1 minute to do so, given the quantity of bookmarks I have. Even if it's a "minor" section in the Firefox code, don't be suprised if there's some other portion of Firefox that's taking longer than normal, in the same way that Netscape Communicator 4.7 CPU-hogged on some cascaded tables.

As for flash, I haven't seen it hog CPU very recently. The worst case where was Flash was able to take out Firefox on certain embedded objects (i.e. as with Sonny) by somehow locking portions of Firefox's interface (i.e. you couldn't select menu items).

Kernel

[Lord Byron II]

I really have come to like the new development style on the Kernel 2.6 branch. At first, I thought that rolling new features in with security and bug fixes was a bad idea, but it has worked out really nicely. Other projects should consider doing these rolling releases.

Already using latest Adblock Plus and NoScript

[Futurepower(R)]

I went to Tools/ Options/ Applications/ and selected "Always ask" or "Save File". I will try that. It's necessary to do that carefully, because the selection box is buggy.

I was already using the latest Adblock Plus and NoScript versions.

I don't think Google is getting much software development for the $50,000,000 each year it is paying.

A good idea

[Monoman]

It would be great if the Firefox team could release updates on a schedule ... I know, I know it is a crazy dream.

But think of it this way. Release the incremental updates (.x) every quarter or six months and release them on time. Release version updates every 12 -24 months, up the the FF team, but stick to the schedule. If the FF team could do that it would show constant improvement and drive MS nuts.

Isn't this how the Ubuntu team operates? I know it is an apples to oranges comparison but I think it could work. There is no way MS could keep up with a consistent release schedule.

awesome

[Adult film producer]

can we look forward to a 3D web experience?

The real reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

something tells me this is just their way of getting all the people who always wait for the x.1 release on board

Firefox still becomes a CPU hog (not crashes)...

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, Firefox 3 does seem improved. But it still becomes a CPU hog (not crashes) when there have been a lot of windows and tabs open for several days, especially when Windows XP has been put into and out of hibernation several times.

I just re-started Firefox because of that problem. I was already using NoScript and Adblock Plus, and now, since the re-start, I'm using Flashblock again, also.

As I mentioned, I went to Tools/ Options/ Applications/ and selected "Always ask" or "Save File" for every application. I will try that over the next few days.

In another discussion on Slashdot about the CPU hogging bug, it seemed plausible to us that the bug is due to the way Firefox hooks and unhooks the keyboard driver. Something gets out of control. With Firefox 2, it was necessary to re-start Windows XP to recover, not just Firefox. I haven't tested Firefox 3 enough to know if it corrupts the operating system.

No one who says the problem doesn't happen to them seems to have duplicated the factors that cause the CPU bug. It is necessary, not just to have a lot of tabs open, but to open and close a lot of tabs, as when someone is doing research over several days.

Conditions for the CPU bug to appear:
1) Open lots of windows and tabs.
2) Close many windows and tabs, and open new ones.
3) Over several days.
4) With several hibernations or standby periods.

Since Firefox corrupts not just itself, but the Windows XP operating system, I suppose that there is a Firefox bug that interacts with a Windows XP bug. That causes me to suspect keyboard handling.

In tests of previous versions of Firefox with Linux, I was able to get Firefox to show the CPU hogging bug, but I was never able to get Firefox to corrupt Linux, which was always very robust.

Yes, I reported all this on Bugzilla, but all I got was the 22 standard excuses for not fixing the bug, which I won't post again in this comment.

Fifty million dollars a year from Google doesn't buy much if Firefox can't become stable, in my opinion. Howewver, I get the impression that Mozilla Foundation is managed better now that the technology-shy lawyer is no longer the chief, so maybe the next several years will be better than the last seven.

registereduser1946

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 3.1a1 has been out for more than a month now

Re:Firefox still becomes a CPU hog (not crashes)..

[mysticgoat]

I don't understand why there is a problem here. Simply shut down FF when you aren't using it, then let the tabs repopulate when you start again.

Heck, that isn't even a workaround, since it is a best practice for users anyway. Why expose your system to possible attacks from a freshly compromised web site, when you aren't actively browsing?

In the more general case, why keep any software running for hours in an idle mode when you aren't using it? Memory that is being hogged by a PIBKAC could be used by the background system diagnostics and tuning routines.

MOD UP PLEASE

[macdaddy]

I have 14 mod points and yet for some reason Slashdot won't let me mod in this thread (no I haven't posted in the thread until now). Weird.

Anyway I wholeheartedly agree. The "awesome bar" is an awesome cluster fuck. I can't believe the devs pulled this kind of shit on the FireFox faithful. Forcing a change on the userbase is something one of the many proprietary companies we all hate would do. I think Moz is getting to big for it's britches.

Re:MOD UP PLEASE

[RebelWebmaster]

You know that Opera is working on similar functionality for their next major version too, right?

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[stinkbomb]

I'm sorry, but if you've never tried to develop an XUL application, then you're not qualified to judge whether not the previous poster is a troll.

Gnash runs in a separate process

[DrYak]

Does Gnash suffer from the same issues?

No.
Gnash might be more buggy and could have more stability issues *BUT* gnash runs in a separate process (gnash's "browser plugin" is in fact a thin layer that launches a separate standalone player and embeds it into firefox) and thus doesn't leak memory from firefox or take down the whole browser whenever it crashes. Also, Gnash can be set in its configuration file not to automatically start playing the animations.

That's why I use it at home (note: I don't read lots of 100% flash-based websites neither).

Firefox session manager doesn't work. Buyers ...

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote: "I don't understand why there is a problem here."

That's right. You don't understand.

The Firefox session manager doesn't always work. If it has some problem reaching a web page in a very short time, it puts a blank space instead of the address in the address bar. It's "I couldn't get there in two seconds, so I suppose you don't want to go there".

Also, exiting Firefox and re-starting often doesn't work. It may improve the CPU hogging, but it is only an improvement, not a fix.

Another quote: "... why keep any software running for hours in an idle mode when you aren't using it?"

I think I can re-phrase that question into what seems to be your statement: "Your use of a browser cannot possibly be different than mine." There are people, such as computer software and hardware buyers, who need to keep tabs open for several days, until they get an email from a seller, for example.

Re:Firefox session manager doesn't work. Buyers ..

[mysticgoat]

It seems your usage is so far removed from both

• designed use of the browser
• common de facto user requirements

that I don't see why a browser should be expected to perform well against your criteria.

FF is open source, so it would be a simple enough thing for you to either fork it yourself or hire someone with the skills to do so, and build a variant that could be left running for days on end, with hundreds of tabs left open.

But I'm not sure that the community needs a browser that meets these requirements. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case I expect this post to get soundly trounced.

Re:Firefox still becomes a CPU hog (not crashes)..

[Sigma 7]

I don't understand why there is a problem here. Simply shut down FF when you aren't using it, then let the tabs repopulate when you start again.

When I use shut down firefox when it isn't in use, I don't have an idea what I'll use it for the next time I launch it. It may be for Slashdot, to look up information about a function, or for some other reason. Having background tabs load tends to slow down what I intend on doing at that given time.

Also, loading an instance of an application is perceived to be slower than pressing alt-tab.

Why expose your system to possible attacks from a freshly compromised web site, when you aren't actively browsing?

A better question is to ask is why web browsers automatically gives that level of trust to a foreign website, given the number and type of attacks that have occurred in the past 10 years. Web pages are just that: pages. They don't need to automatically refresh (unless the website operator is desperate for traffic enough to cycle ads), and the content doesn't change that frequently (unless it's a really high-traffic website, in which case you'll miss stuff anyway.)

In the more general case, why keep any software running for hours in an idle mode when you aren't using it?

I came up with an even more general case - why keep software installed if you aren't going to use them? This resulted in installing only the minimal components of Windows 95, causing some later applications to falter since I didn't install any networking components on a non-networked computer.

Basically, you have to have software installed, even if there's no perceived use. At that point, you can keep certain applications in memory with full knowledge that they can be swapped to disk if they aren't doing anything (they'll be reloaded if you click on the window.)

Excuses 8 and 10

[Futurepower(R)]

Old stuff. Those are Mozilla developer excuses numbers 8 and 10.

Eventually, years from now, I won't need to post the list. I'll just answer such comments with the excuse numbers.

Firefox Developer Top 20 Excuses
for Not Fixing the Firefox CPU Hogging bug

These are actual excuses given at one time or another.

1. Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of seven years.]
2. Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually takes 100% of CPU power, and makes Windows XP unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox.]
3. Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4. Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didn't show the bug.]
5. No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack does not generate a report if Firefox is hogging the CPU. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6. If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didn't bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7. This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
8. You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Opera.]
9. I don't like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didn't read it or think about it.]
10. You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11. Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
12. If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.]
13. Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14. Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15. If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to discover the problem: Standard diagnostic - Firefox. [Firefox has "Standard Diagnostics". It has become accepted that some users will have severe problems. !!! ]
16. I won't actually read the (many) bug reports, but I will give you some complicated technical speculation. [This pretends to be helpful but, on investigation, is shown to have nothing to do with the bugs.]
17. It's understandable that Firefox developers become defensive when users report so many problems.
18. To spend smart developers' time going over reports of bugs generated by analysis tools would be a waste. [There have been 3 analysis tools recently used to find Firefox bugs, and many have been found: 1) A special tool designed by a Firefox developer. 2) Software by Coverity. 3) Klocwork's K7.]
19. Your bug report was not specific enough. [Numerous conditions were listed which provide reliable ways to reproduce the problem.]

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[RebelWebmaster]

One thing that changed substantially during the Firefox 3 development cycle was that Mozilla finally created a useful testing architecture to spot and avoid regressions much better than before. Also, they've switched to Mercurial for post-3.0 development to allow for better development on concurrent branches while staying off the trunk. As a result, they're aiming to keep the trunk in a constant release-ready state specifically to allow for faster turnaround time for 3.x releases.

A datum for the awesomebar debate

[DragonHawk]

While I admit, the option to turn it off should appear somewhere, if only in about:config, the development team isn't ignoring it's users.

Really? So far, it seems like we can paraphrase the response from the developers as, "We'll tell you the same thing we told the other 100,000 people who asked for it: Nobody wants the old behavior back!"

The awesomebar debate has had tons of anecdotes and personal theories, but very little hard data. So here's a real data point:

Since Firefox 3.0 went to general release, the Oldbar extension has been downloaded at least 70,000 times. (It was at roughly 15K when I downloaded it on 3.0 release day.)

70,000 seems non-trivial to me.

Re:A datum for the awesomebar debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of downloads from "Download Day": 8,249,092
Number of downloads of oldbar as of now: 84,786 (the count provided on addons.mozilla.org)

Assuming only half of the downloads from "Download Day" are regular users:

(84,786 / 4,124,546) = 2.06%

Roughly 1 in 50 downloads doesn't really seem like they're ignoring the user base.

Re:A datum for the awesomebar debate

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify: I'm not trying to say 2% is insignificant, but rather I'm trying to say the developers are not ignoring the user base. I do not find it unreasonable that the new address bar should be optional.

Re:A datum for the awesomebar debate

[BZ]

Firefox 3 has been downloaded 20-some million times during that time.

So 70,000 is about 0.35% of the people who downloaded Firefox 3.

Definitions of "trivial" may vary of course.

Weighing response and impact

[DragonHawk]

Roughly 1 in 50 downloads doesn't really seem like they're ignoring the user base.

Hypothetically, if it was someone demonstrated that Firefox lost 1 in 50 users to MSIE, Opera, etc., it would cause great response (Slashdot headlines, etc.). Obviously, people aren't that upset about it, but I think it demonstrates that 2% of users is not the same as two pennies. I'd call it significant enough a number to warrant developer response beyond the current behavior. Again, the response so far has been to tell people who want an option for the old behavior that they're wrong. Especially since we're not talking about writing a lot of new code; we're talking about not removing the old code. Indeed, there used to be such an option; it was removed (along with the old code). So it actually took more developer effort (short term) to get the current situation.

Re:There is no such thing as a quick Firefox relea

[trawg]

I'm sorry, but if you've never tried to develop an XUL application, then you're not qualified to judge whether not the previous poster is a troll.

I'm not saying XUL is bug free or painless for developers. The post I was replying to was a clear attack on the end-usability of XUL applications. I merely pointed out that I use XUL applications on a daily basis and don't experience "major" bugs.

Your post appears to support the troll but like the troll, you haven't even included any even anecdotal evidence to support your case, so I have no way of changing my opinion!