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Firefox 3.1 Alpha "Shiretoko" Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-compile-on dept.

Just as you were getting used to 3.0, those Mozilla guys have announced 3.1's Alpha release. FTA "Built on the pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, Shiretoko includes a variety of new features. Called an 'early developer milestone,' the release includes bug fixes, improved Web standards support, Text API for the Canvas Element, support for border images and JavaScript query selectors, and improvements to the tab-switching function and the Smart Location Bar." You can download it if you dare.

19 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome bar disable? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does it contain the ability to disable the 'Awesome Bar' completely?

    1. Re:Awesome bar disable? by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I actually love it, being able to type just an 's' to go to slashdot, or an 'x' to go to xkcd. But I know you're just trolling so whatever.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    2. Re:Awesome bar disable? by negRo_slim · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I hope so, the Awesome bar was the only reason why I switched back to Firefox 2. I really don't understand how they could do something so wrong.

      I thought the same thing, now I enjoy being able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two.

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    3. Re:Awesome bar disable? by jd142 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Once I learned how to use it properly, I've grown to like it.

      What do people hate about it? I'm genuinely curious.

    4. Re:Awesome bar disable? by novafluxx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No idea, I use to to navigate a lot faster than I did in FF2. I just start typing the name of something I have visited and it doesn't have to be the URL... I love it I think its awesome, but I guess having the option to disable it for those that want to disable it would be okay, as long as they don't complain about FF being "bloated."

    5. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Hatta · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always been able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two. Hit 's' and slashdot.org is right there. The Awesome Bar pollutes the simplicity of the address bar with useless matches. If I really wanted to go to maps.google.com, I'd have started typing with an 'm' not an 's'.

      The awesome bar is retarded.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    6. Re:Awesome bar disable? by negRo_slim · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always been able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two. Hit 's' and slashdot.org is right there.

      Yes but when I hit 't' that gives me The pirate bay, youtube, myspace, slashdot, flickr, in that order. I'm sorry but that is convenient. And I'm sure I could hit a different key for better results, but I'm pretty happy being able to visit nearly all my sites with one key press and a click. You pair that up with proper RSS feeds and you're golden.

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    7. Re:Awesome bar disable? by jomas1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't know why you are being presented maps.google.com when you enter an "s". Personally I love this feature. Now if I want to go to the University of Houston's website I can start typing "Houston" rather than remember something conter-intuitive like https://www.ed2go.com/ (which is the UofH homepage)

      For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit and allowing me to search for these sites by keywords in the url or title of the webpage. This is much more useful than manually keeping a list of bookmarks that become useless as soon as there are too many to view without scrolling.

      --
      http://nyamenation.org/
    8. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Hatta · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If all you want is a list of your favorite sites accessible through a keypress, that's what bookmarks are for. I can see how that feature would be nice, but it really belongs as some sort of smart bookmarks, not in the address bar.

      What sense does it make for myspace to come up when you hit a 't'? There's no 't' in the address at all! There's a fundamental UI maxim, the Principle of Least Astonishment, in short, don't surprise the user. This is about the most astonishing behavior I could imagine from an address bar.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    9. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Miladinoski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then instead of switching to a version of a browser which isn't conforming to the latest web standards (FF 2.x), you could have just tried Opera, which address bar is better (at least to me of course) than Firefox's.

      --
      [insert lame sig here]
    10. Re:Awesome bar disable? by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Maybe they should change it, so that if it has no history, or the ranking difference between pages is very low, that it chooses more appropriate stuff, such as urls beginning with those characters. That way, on day one, it automatically matches to the URL, just like FireFox 2 did, and once it builds up a good enough history, it can start to make better decisions.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    11. Re:Awesome bar disable? by jomas1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit

      That's the problem. The awesome bar conflates two different and important functions, the address bar and bookmarks. If they had provided a smart bookmarks feature instead of ruining the address bar, no one would be complaining.

      Fair enough. You used bookmarks and so the awesomebar does not work for you. I have 5 bookmarks on my bookmark toolbar. I stopped manually keeping any more bookmarks than will fit on my toolbar because as soon as I have to keep a list of nested bookmarks I am unable to easily access most of them.

      I started using del.icio.us a few years ago so that I would be able to manage my bookmarks better. Now I have 800+ bookmarks and can't really remember any of them without reviewing the tags I've applied over the years so del.icio.us is useless for day to day browsing as well.

      The awesomebar has been a godsend for day to day browsing and allows me to not have to keep track of bookmarks and, more importantly, prevents me from having to repeatedly organize these bookmarks.

      My kid has a myspace page and I hate myspace and am completely unable to navigate it. I do, however, make a point of checking up on his page from time to time but since I'd given up bookmarks the only way to do this using FF2 was to go to myspace.com and then search for his username (the search feature on myspace sucks btw and I often wasted time trying to find his page again). Now all I have to do is type his username in the address bar. This is extremely convenient and from what I've observed of other people as they surf the web much more intuitive than bookmarks.

      --
      http://nyamenation.org/
    12. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Thomasje · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The nice thing about the old URL bar is that it allows you to go back to recently visited sites with only two mouse clicks. No typing required at all.
      It would have been better if selecting a URL from the drop-down had actually moved it to the top of the list, so that the most recently visited entries would always be at the top, but for some reason (and despite many requests, just check the bugzilla), the FF gods decided that that feature, which Mozilla had had since time immemorial, should no longer exist. I guess this was when I started to get that creepy feeling that the FF architects no longer cared what actual users think, since they are so much smarter and will therefore do our thinking for us.
      FWIW, I actually created and submitted a patch for the FF2 URL bar, but it was not accepted. Developers too busy with the Awesome Bar, I guess... So now, after first having seen the URL bar take an (admittedly small) turn for the worse in FF compared to Mozilla, now we have this monstrosity that shows tons of pages whose URL I never typed; instead of it being a convenient most-recently-selected list, it has become a search engine.
      I don't object to improvements and new features, but why on Earth the FF architects feel this intense need to remove a popular feature is beyond me. Is it stupidity or arrogance or what? The comments here on /. also tend to be in the same vein: the Awesome Bar is better, if you don't like it there is something wrong with you -- obviously never having paid attention to the criticism that useful functionality was removed. Sheesh.

    13. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Haeleth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If they'd simply called it 'enhanced address bar', made it optional but default, and described it as 'awesome' there wouldn't have been this massive resistance to it.

      They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.

    14. Re:Awesome bar disable? by aeoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Right on. The only people who bitch about the Awesome Bar are those that never learned how to use it properly. They just want the way it always was because they can't possibly be bothered to learn anything new. When these people go into politics we call them "conservatives". It's the same exact mindset. It's a mindset of a person who is set in stone after the age of 16 or so and pretty much dies thinking the same way they were born.

  2. Canvas Element and support for border images? by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about box-shadow? Yes the specs aren't official yet but you could still, you know, make it with the vendor prefix.

    It would also allow you to try to introduce better parameters (type of contour, for one) that other browsers could pick up, so the W3C can add it as an official parameter. That's why vendor prefixes exist AFAIK.

  3. The Numbers by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For anyone curious how things compare, here are the numbers for Acid 3 compliance and sunspider javascript speed for Firefox and Safari on OS X on my laptop. For Acid 3, higher is better. For Sunspider, lower is better.

    Firefox 3.0

    • Acid 3 - 67/100
    • Sunspider - 4330

    Firefox 3.1 Alpha

    • Acid 3 - 83/100
    • Sunspider - 3426

    Safari 3.1.2

    • Acid 3 - 77/100
    • Sunspider - 7516

    Safari 3.1.2 with nightly Webkit

    • Acid 3 - 98/100
    • Sunspider - 2174
  4. Does it fix the repaint bug? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is the bug where (I see it on Windows, but I have heard reports on Linux as well) you switch tabs, and the window contents don't repaint. Or sometimes you visit a new page, and when Firefox reflows the page, it doesn't erase the old drawn stuff, leading to a big mess at the end. The former needs no screenshot - it's basically switch tabs, and nothing appears to happen (until you scroll which forces the revealed part to be drawn, but the rest of the contents are merely shifted up).

    At first I thought it was maybe a Windows thing if you exhaust the desktop heap, but it happens in Firefox first, before the other apps that normally suffer from it fail.

    All the huge speed gains in FF3 are nullified if one has to scroll to get the window to repaint properly...

  5. stop with the UI get some real features... by johnjones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    so from the look of it the UI is a nice little play thing
    its annoyed a lot of people

    how many people would be annoyed if they actually supported SVG ?
    or even SVG tiny ? (my phone has support why not mozilla...)

    I know mozilla has some support but really support all of a standard or a section at least such as SVG tiny

    GIVE ME decent GRAPHS please

    regards

    John Jones