Firefox 3.1 Alpha "Shiretoko" Released

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.

Comments

Awesome bar disable?

[Richard_at_work]

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

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Randle_Revar]

thankfully, no

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rik Sweeney]

Everyone! Over here quickly, and bring your camera! I found the one person who likes the Awesome bar!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The awesome bar works a bit like google pagerank, by creating associations between your partial input and the page you choose from the menu. If you write the initial letter of the desired URL and then click on the page you want to visit, it will (very) soon behave like the old URL bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[hansamurai]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Verteiron]

I loathed the Awesomebar too. When I first started using it I would type "s" and it would list sites I only visited once, a year ago, because they had an "s" somewhere near the end of the URL, while sites with 's' near the beginning were listed much lower. This is obviously broken functionality, but I'm seeing less and less of that sort of thing the longer I use it. The longer you use it the better it gets; it has some kind of sorting algorithm that takes a while to get going properly. I have found typing a single word of the page title to relocate a page useful on occasion, and I now go for days at a time without cursing this unremovable feature.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[negRo_slim]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jd142]

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

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

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ShieldW0lf]

I feel the same way. But it looks like they've made an effort:

If you prefer the results to always restrict to history and match only in the URL, you can go to about:config and change the corresponding preferences to nothing (edit the value and delete the special character). This way you can always be only searching your visited history and not worry about matching in the title.

The Javascript Query Selectors looks very interesting... I could really use that for unit testing.

The "border image" stuff has been a long time coming too... when I think of how many unnecessary nested tables I've had to build just because some suit wanted rounded corners of a certain color on everything, it makes me want to puke.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Fallingcow]

I could already do that in FF2. Awesomebar added nothing but annoyance.

But hey, that's what add-ons are for, right?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[novafluxx]

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."

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rik Sweeney]

Seriously, here goes:

I *hate* having to type stuff into the address bar. I only have about 20 entries in the browser history, but when I put FF3 on, most of those suddenly vanished and the only way I could get back to Slashdot was to type it in.

I don't want to type it in everytime I want to go there, why can't I just click on the fucking drop down arrow and look for it there, instead of typing in s.l.a.s until it finally comes up, then having to press the down arrow and hitting return. I could have found slashdot in 2 clicks and perhaps one scroll of the mousewheel.

I don't want to type in scummvm and get back 20 results of random pages containing the word scummvm but not a single one pointing to the main site.

In defence of the Awesome bar, I only used it for about an hour before dismissing it, but I reckon 1 hour is enough...

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MROD]

Where as currently, with Firefox 2 I get to them without any key presses at all, it's all with two clicks of the mouse.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[bigstrat2003]

Right, cause anyone who claims to dislike the feature is simply trolling. No one could actually, honestly dislike it!

Fanboy much?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

That worked just fine in FF2. Now when I type s I get "eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices". I bought something online recently. God only knows how long it will take their ridiculous 'frecency' algorithm to realize I only go to eBay once in a while. Nothing like unpredictable, unreliable behavior to make a feature suck. Thanks, awesomebar!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[andy9701]

I think it's the "once I learned to use it properly" part that most people don't like.

Before I upgraded to FF3, I could type "a", down arrow, enter and it would take me to ArsTechnica, or "c", down, enter to go to CNN. Just after I first upgraded, doing that would take me to some semi-random URL that had those characters in it.

Now, however, when I do that it works as it did in FF2. As some others have said here, the AwesomeBar seems to have some sort of sorting algorithm behind it that puts more often visited sites towards the top of the list. This gives you more of what you expect to happen, although not at first.

I personally didn't like the AwesomeBar much at first, but now I don't mind it. My main complaint is that it doesn't auto-complete the URL for any matches. There is an about:config entry to have it auto-complete when it matches a URL, but it still doesn't auto-complete when it matches anything else. Maybe that option will be available in 3.1.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[negRo_slim]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[snl2587]

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

People hate it because people, in general, hate change, and the Slashdot community is no exception to that rule. It seems to me that while some people tried it and genuinely did not like it (which is ok), most people tried it a few times (not nearly long enough to build the history database), got frustrated, and then declared that the Awesome Bar was evil and the bane of FF3.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Randle_Revar]

The awesomebar learns, and if you use it for a while, the sites you use most will move up the list.

Anyway, if you had about 20 entries you used in the dropdown list, why not use bookmarks on the toolbar? Keep the titles short, and you can fit in a fair number, and a folder or two goes a long way. If sites have recognizable favicons, you could even remove the titles and fit in a lot more.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[carnalforge]

Because i'm used as in all other browsers to just type the first URL characters (not considering the www) and getting URLs that start with those characters, not a randoom collection of stuff that just happens to have those characters somewhere. In short, it should be a location bar.
It's okay for me to have to change an obscure about:config setting to, no problem with that. But fucks sake, at least leave it configurable.

And, okay, an episode that happened to me related to the awfullbar; i was with the boss in front of my computer and had to make a quick search on google for checking something or such. Typed the first characters and got the pull down with the usual randoom collection of URLS not starting with what i typed. And much of those were from a porn site. And the icon included in the urls was the top of all.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mattsson]

There's an easy tweak that at least make the 'Awesome Bar' less annoying.

Go to 'about:config'
Change 'browser.urlbar.maxRichResults' to 1 (Or 0, but I've found 1 to work well for me)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MooseMuffin]

The results are sorted by relevance based on how often you visit that site, and how often you get there by hitting 's' in the address bar. If its bringing up maps.google.com first, that's apparently representative of how you browse. It knows me pretty damn well by now, and even typing in 'www' brings me up an extremely accurate list of the sites I still access by manually typing in URLs.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[das3cr]

Why not bookmark slashdot?

The bar searches your bookmarks too. When I type s slashdot is always the first mark returned.

I find the bookmark search has value because my history gets deleted so often.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[spinkham]

If you only have 20 places you want to go, that's what the bookmarks toolbar is for. It has a "most visited" dropdown by default, and room for at least 15 or so one click launches if you keen the names short.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[omnipresentbob]

It sorts mostly by recent history and frequency, from what I can tell. If I haven't been to a certain site in a week or so, it takes longer for it to find it.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[gehrehmee]

And you expect it to guess what you want accurately from you typing a single character? Keep typing! That said, I've been shocked at how often it DOES guess correctly what I'm interested in on just 1-3 characters.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MROD]

I'm sure that it's not really Slashdot he's talking about, merely using it as an example.

The drop-down menu history is VERY useful as a temporary set of bookmarks which you will only need for a short period (say a month) and don't want to litter your real bookmarks with.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mattsson]

Why is it bad to offer the user the option to configure Firefox the way he/she likes it?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Randle_Revar]

The drop-down menu history is VERY useful as a temporary set of bookmarks which you will only need for a short period (say a month) and don't want to litter your real bookmarks with.

That is what I have a tmp folder on my bookmark toolbar for. Alternatively, if you use the awesome bar regularly, it should work fine for that use case.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[TheRaven64]

I haven't used FireFox 3, so I don't know what this 'Awesome Bar' thing is (although it has a painfully stupid name that makes me want to hate it already), but that's how I always used to get to Slashdot in Opera back in around 2002 - hit s, autocompletes to slashdot.org, enter. I just tried it in Safari, and it works too. I don't use it in Safari, however, because it associates the first ten bookmarks in your bookmarks bar with command-1 to command-9, even when the bar itself is hidden, and so I get to Slashdot by hitting command-5 (from anywhere, not just a specific text field). This is actually the feature I miss most in other browsers - not being able to get to my most-visited sites with a single key-chord.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[deadmantyping]

i too was confused by the inclusion of myspace in that list. I am using 3.0 and I have my awesome bar disabled, I use bookmarks, I really don't see where the problem is

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Miladinoski]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Torinaga-Sama]

I can see where that would be useful, it just does not fit my personal browsing style and honestly the forced paradigm shift away from using the location bar where you reference URLs alphabetically to one where you search your history has been an unwelcome one for me at least. I have been trying to hit it with an open mind, as my love for the application is true, but I have to question the logic of making such a fundamental change non-toggleable. I personally would have preferred a more intelligent bookmarking system as I don't really need to see every redirect URL when I know exactly where I want to go.

It has also got me thinking that I am probably just a URL remembering dinosaur, and soon when the .product domains come online, no one will remember domain names anymore and we will have to search using history in such a manner.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[CastrTroy]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I DON'T WANT IT TO GUESS ANYTHING. I want it to show me urls that start with the letter I typed. If I type 's' I don't want to see fucking ebay. Anywhere.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[zenslug]

One hour is not enough. If you can stick with it for a few days it will learn what sites/pages you go to when typing s.l.a... For me, I was checking the iPhone availability page on Apple's website. Now, when I type in the letter 'a' it gives me the right link the first line.

Because it also looks at the title of the page, when I type in "amazon" it shows me the link to the email in my Gmail account that has the link to track my Amazon order. That's useful. I was about to head to Amazon's site and drill into my account, but instead I was only a click or two away from seeing the tracking info. If I want amazon.com I can instead hold down the control key and hit enter. I see it as more fast options in front of me.

I say you should give it some time first. It does take an adjustment, but it seems to pay off in the end.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

and, okay, an episode that happened to me related to the awfullbar

And that's completely the a*bar's fault, and nothing to do with your browsing inappropriately at work?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[LargeMythicalReptile]

As far as I can tell, no.

This is assuming you're using "disable completely" to mean "FF2-like functionality". I dislike the Awesome Bar, but it's better than having no location bar dropdown at all (which, for some reason, is what people seem to recommend when I complain--maxRichResults is not what I want, and neither are the other about:config options).

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[STrinity]

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.

Why? The address bar is already searching my history, so why not bookmarks too? Making a separate search bar would just add clutter.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Why is it bad to offer the user the option to configure Firefox the way he/she likes it?

Within reason. Every time you "just make something configurable", you can be doubling the number of paths you have to test and validate whenever you change something.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[fprintf]

In your example, by the "Boss" do you mean:
a) your work boss, that is, you are now unemployed for using your work computer for p*rn?
b) your wife, that is, you are now getting it *less* for being found to be a dirty wanker?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[CastrTroy]

Isn't this the University of Houston home page?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Firehed]

As Firefox 3 includes a Smart Bookmarks feature (by that exact name, stuck automatically in your bookmarks bar), I'm honestly unsure whether you're trolling or just ignorant.

I love the awesome bar, but that comes largely in part because all of the URLs on my company's website and intranet haven't been nicely converted to pretty permalinks and I'm not a big fan of trying to remember KB article IDs and stupid crap like that. I just type the first few letters of the article name and it's in the list.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't have your awesomebar disabled. You can't disable the awesomebar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[STrinity]

If I really wanted to go to maps.google.com, I'd have started typing with an 'm' not an 's'.

However, if you want to look at a Wikipedia article about Dashiell Hammett that you read last week, it makes a lot more sense to type "Dash" in the address bar than "wikip^H^H^H^H^Hen.wikipedia.org/Dash."

Besides, after the first week, the Awesome Bar learned what sites I visit most, so now when I hit "S" it brings up Slashdot, Sword and Laser, and South Park Studios as the top results. Even better, I can now type in "amazon book" or "amazon mp3" to get right to a specific Amazon store instead of having to go through the mainpage and look at the giant Kindle ad.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

Yeah, but I take some of their continuing ed online courses which are not listed on the page you linked.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

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.

Actually, I don't use bookmarks at all. That's why the awesome bar doesn't work for me. Because it tries to stuff bookmarks in my address bar, and I don't want bookmarks at all. If I need to visit a page again, I'll google it.

Like I said, I can see how the feature is useful, it just doesn't belong in the address bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[CastrTroy]

Why wouldn't they just use a subdomain?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

There are hundreds of millions of non-meaningful urls and it gets harder every day to register a meaningful one. Turn the awesomebar off if you just don't get it but understand that it does prevent other people from having to keep dozens (hundreds?) of bookmarks or remember urls like clicktoshipitblalablablablablbl.com if they don't have to.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

Just ignorant I guess. I don't use bookmarks, and I don't think I've ever clicked the bookmarks menu on my copy of FF3.

As I've been saying, it can be a useful feature. But they should provide a 'search history' bar or something, and not mess up the simple predictable behavior of the address bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trolling? The awesomebar lives up to its name. Among all the other good stuff that came with 3, that one stands out and I wasn't expecting it to.

red pro -> programming.reddit.com
flix mem -> www.netflix.com/memberHome
s gmail -> https://gmail.com

It even pulls words out of the titles of pages I've visited, so I don't even have to remember the url.

As a web developer it makes my work easier as I can type in for example 'dev lookup 1445' and it will often pull up a url like www.longdevsitename.com/longblah/lookup.php?uid=1445, which often happens to be exactly what I was looking for. Firefox 2 doesn't even come close to this.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

Why wouldn't they just use a subdomain?

I have no idea. That would be more intuitive than ed2go.edu or whatever it is they use. I'd have to google it everytime I want to login if not for FF3

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

However, if you want to look at a Wikipedia article about Dashiell Hammett that you read last week, it makes a lot more sense to type "Dash" in the address bar than "wikip^H^H^H^H^Hen.wikipedia.org/Dash."

Actually it makes more sense to just put "Dashiell Hammett" into the search bar. It makes no sense to put anything other than addresses into the address bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[rubberglove]

I wouldn't say I hate it, but I do find it gets in my way fairly often.
When I'm developing a website, I'm likely to have a couple of subdomains up for testing: dev.example.com (on my local machine), test.example.com (on the server) and www.example.com (production site).

This really tends to screw with the awesomebar's search algorithm.
dev.example.com will most dominate the top of the list, since I'm visiting and reloading pages on it most often. I'm so used to being able to type example.com into the location bar to go to the production site that it catches me at least half the time with the autocomplete, and I find myself on the dev or test site (usually when I'm typing faster than I'm thinking).

I'm getting more and more used to it (and to typing in www), so it's starting to happen less.

Recently, however, I was working on a site that had something like www.example.com (production) and examples.example.com (for testing). This drove me crazy enough that I did most of my work/testing with FF2.

Most of the time I find the awesomebar fairly useful, but I would love to be able to exclude specific sites (or patterns) from the 'rich results'.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[SnEptUne]

Use Internet Explorer!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[The End Of Days]

Because if the OP doesn't find the feature useful, then no one is allowed to either, dammit. Otherwise his worldview is shot because he'll be forced to confront the fact that he is not, in fact, the arbiter of taste for the population at large.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[negRo_slim]

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.

But it does work with book marks, if you notice the little star at the end of the address bar, that will allow you to easily bookmark any number of sites, then using the awesome bar to find the site not always by it's address but also by it's title I think is a marvelous thing after a few days use.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Tangent128]

Opera's Speed Dial is linked to similar shortcuts (CTRL-1, etc., I think), in case you're interested.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[carnalforge]

Nope, has to do with the fact that i use my personal laptop on job too. And damnit, is my fucking business how i use it out of job

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[carnalforge]

c) by contract i have to provide a computer for my own, so it's my laptop and i use it how the fuck i want out of work. And as for your d) i dont have to be married for being able to "have it". And neither had the need to pay for that either. But of course being here i should had expected this reply.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Thomasje]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[wylacot]

What I find amazing that, after having bookmarked a site which has an "https" address, all I have to do is type "h" in the awesomebar and it *knows* my destination. That's as wonderful a shortcut as any macro key I could program somewhere.

I scrub my entries on the public computer shared with colleagues at work when I close FF3, so I don't retain those benefits. On my private computer at work where FF3's personal settings are only accessible by logging into XP (I know, huge security comfort, right?), I keep the bookmarks in place.

Three cheers for awesomebar; Mozilla developers, please don't take away from functionality.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ArcticFlood]

The most useful part of Awesomebar is being able to type "Firefox 3.1" or "3.1 alpha" or "shire" and have this Slashdot story in the top few items. Without the Awesomebar, you'd have to look through the titles and somehow remember that this story was on 'tech.slashdot.org'. This is more useful on forums that insist on long page titles so you can't see the thread's title in the old bar's summary, or even forums that don't include the title at all.

Admittedly, Awesomebar is a horrid name.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

If you read any of my posts, you'd see that in nearly every one I admit that the feature does have its uses. I just don't want to give up my simple predictable address bar. The people who think that they are the arbiter of taste for the population at large are those devs who have not listened to the community, a large part of which does not like this behavior. There's really no reason we can't have both an address bar and an awesome bar, configurable at the users desire. It's arrogant, user hostile, arbitrary decision making on the part of the devs, and I'd really like to see a fork along the lines of FunPidgin.

Thanks for trolling though.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[STrinity]

Actually it makes more sense to just put "Dashiell Hammett" into the search bar

No it doesn't. First, "Dashiell Hammett" in the search bar takes more keystrokes than "Dash" followed by down arrow and enter in the Awesome Bar. Secondly, with the search bar you have to load a search engine page and then click on the Wikipedia article, while the Awesome Bar lets you navigate directly there.

It makes no sense to put anything other than addresses into the address bar.

Makes plenty of sense to me -- you're still putting the address in the address bar, but now you can find the one you want by typing the page title or using a nickname you gave it in your bookmarks. But more importantly, it makes navigating the web a lot easier, so even if the Awesome Bar doesn't make sense, I'd accept it.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rolgar]

If there are items you want to eliminate from the Awesome Bar results, scroll down and hit delete.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MMC Monster]

Yes, it makes sense to put the term into the search bar. But, consider if the page you were looking for was on the third or fourth page of search results.

Wouldn't you like to give weight to pages you have visited? Wouldn't you want to give extra weight to pages you have visited more than once?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jason.sweet]

When I press 's', slashdot.org is still right there.

If you don't want myspace to show up when you press 't', grow up and stop going to myspace.

You can disable the awesomebar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[SKPhoton]

I really like the Awesome bar. It's very useful.

One cool use for it I've found is punching in pieces of the full URL and having it find the correct link.

For example, let's say I was looking for www.domain.com/blog/name-of-some-cool-article/

In the awesome bar I could type: domain cool article

and it would find what I was looking for. Plus it searches titles of the website as well. It makes it much easier to find pages that exist in my history.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Hatta]

No it doesn't. First, "Dashiell Hammett" in the search bar takes more keystrokes than "Dash" followed by down arrow and enter in the Awesome Bar. Secondly, with the search bar you have to load a search engine page and then click on the Wikipedia article, while the Awesome Bar lets you navigate directly there.

Good points, the awesome bar does things that neither the traditional address bar, nor the traditional search bar does. Assuming we only want 2 text bars in the UI, I think it makes a lot more sense to put those features in the search bar than in the address bar. What the awesome bar does is fundamentally a search. We should have a traditional address bar, and then a hybrid search/awesome bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[POWRSURG]

myspace and flickr come up for 't' because of the 't's in 'http'. It really surprised me when I hit 'h' and saw every site I ever visited show up on my first experience using Firefox 3.

The awesome bar really needs to ignore protocols!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[dashesy]

Having the choice to disable a such controversial feature is the freedom developers give to the end users. I wish they continue listening to the customers. How much I hate it when a supposedly "addon" features become sticky behaviors of an application. I often do not type the url bar. Google does a better job when I want to find a website

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Matt Perry]

I don't want to type it in everytime I want to go there, why can't I just click on the fucking drop down arrow and look for it there

You can, but the bar has to learn what sites you visit most often. That means you have to use it so it can learn. When I click on the drop down arrow I now see the sites I visit the most right at the top.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[blazerw11]

I want it to show me urls that start with the letter I typed.

Type "w".

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[LargeMythicalReptile]

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

Basically, it's never smart enough to Know What I Want 100% of the time.

If I start typing something in FF2's location bar, I know exactly what the results will be (conceptually, and often exactly): they'll be the URLs that begin with the letters I typed, arranged by frequency. I know and can predict this behavior.

If I start typing something in FF3's location bar, it will sometimes display what I want, and sometimes display oddball matches, with no rhyme or reason. The problem is not lack of training the algorithm--I've been using FF3 since Download Day--but rather that sites I visit frequently will be matched (based on title or other characters) above sites I visit infrequently that I try to type directly.

Examples:
-First of all, it seems to match "http". If I type "h", it will match a completely unrelated, frequently-visited page (whose only "h" in URL/title is in the "http") above hulu.com (which I visit occasionally). This is inexcusable.
-Even if the above is fixed, the same problem occurs with "ancillary" data. If I type "e", the first hit is...http://www.cnn.com. Because I visit that site frequently, and there's an "E" in the title ("CNN.com - Breaking news, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News"). I would much prefer the first hit to be a site whose URL starts with "e", or at least one that uses "e" in some meaningful rather than meaningless keyword. (There are several such sites in my history, but I only visit them occasionally.)

There is, AFAICT, no way to fix this latter problem, since there's no way for me to specify that I want a site that starts with "e" rather than going off a keyword. I thus get spurious results. (And no, the answer isn't "type keywords instead"--sometimes the most logical keyword is the URL.)

So basically, it tries to be too smart, but because it doesn't actually know whether I'm typing the beginning of a URL or a (mid-URL or title) keyword, it inevitably presents spurious results in the dropdown. FF2, OTOH, is entirely predictable. This predictability allows me to get to the result I want quickly, because I know exactly how to get it to the top of the dropdown list.

I recognize that the "Awesome Bar" is popular with a number of people. I'm fine with it being the default behavior. I just want an option to revert to the FF2-like model, and don't understand why such an option doesn't exist.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jorgevillalobos]

a large part of which does not like this behavior

Reference, please.

FWIW, they are planning to allow the option to bring back the old behavior. It's already in the trunk, so it will probably make it to 3.1.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[compro01]

You might try setting browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped in about:config to true. I believe that makes it do what you desire.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[vux984]

although it has a painfully stupid name that makes me want to hate it already

That's really the -biggest- strike against it. The presumption that I or anyone else would think its awesome immediately triggers the hate response. 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.

The reality is that its really good. I can reliably pull up a LOT more url's with a lot less effort. It is true that some of the mnemonics for urls that I was used to in FF2 don't work, and I've had to expand to 2 characters or 3. But after using it since release, 's' brings up slashdot first again. But what's even more interesting, is that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th results are all also sites I frequent regularly, and FF3 has made it easier to get to them. I don't use bookmarks nearly as often now. One of my clients has a page listing its branch offices that I need to refer to frequently for contact information... i used to pull up their site and browse to the locations page, or use a bookmark... in FF3 i type 'loc' and its the first match. The next few matches are the list of locations for a couple of other businesses I've looked up recently... which is also useful.

I really have nothing negative to say about FF3's address bar.

To those people who are finding a couple of their most frequently used sites have moved 'down' the list, the benefits do outweigh the cost. Push through it, so that FF3 can learn or choose a new mnemonic for that url; it -is- worth the trouble.

Its pretty amusing really on some level. This is the sort of thing we routinely ridicule our less nerdy counterparts for... we mock them for their refusal to use a product called 'firefox' because it doesn't sound 'professional' like 'internet explorer'... we ridicule their inability and/or blind refusal to cope with even a slight deviation in user interface... we tell anecdotes about how we had to set Windows XP's theme to classic before our bosses could/would use it...because it was scary and different... or because it looked like 'candy' and they didn't want to use a childish OS.

And yet here we are... its comical to see how many of us 'enlightened' people are hung up on the feature name, or the fact that a couple keyboard shortcuts are working a bit differently. Aren't we the same people who are supposedly able to effortlessly transition from platform to platform, from distro to distro, able to pick up any pieces of electronics and figure it out. Last time I checked, we weren't known for buying a new phone and rejecting/hating it simply because the menu arrangement wasn't identical to the old one, or because it had to 'learn' our preferred autocompletions for text messaging all over again. People we mock and ridicule do that. How does it feel? :)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MooseMuffin]

Anything I've visited within the scope of my history is easily accessed via the address bar. Anything new I want to find is best accessed via the search bar. This is much the way its always been, except now the address bar is better at it. For me, it has completely supplanted bookmarks, as the sites I go to most often are shown by default, and any that don't make the cut are showing within 1 or 2 letters.

You seem very anti-awesomebar, as I was at first, but I'm curious if your complaint is more philosophical (I don't like the idea of it) or practical (it doesn't do what I want it to). Because I'm almost positive that you can get the awesome bar to act very much like the old bar if you continue to use it that way. If you hit 's' to get to slashdot often, slashdot will quickly become the first result when pressing s. If you like to hit 'so' to go to "someotherwebsite", that will quickly become your top 'so' result. The behavior of the awesomebar can be as predictable as your browsing habits.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MROD]

Apparently, it can be mostly disabled if you delve into about:config somewhere. However, why not just have a tick-box in the configuration panel? It's not rocket science.

Of course, there may be another issue of ego and/or idealism getting in the way as well. Open source projects *never* have those though, so it can't be! ;-)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jorgevillalobos]

That's probably a duplicate of other bugs that have already been resolved. The answer seems to be "yes" for providing a way to disable this behavior.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[hairyfeet]

The problem I have is when you have more than 1 family member use FF3. I find it is really irritating to hit "g" and get 400 game sites that my youngest nephew visited sometime instead of just Google. I guess I'll have to set Firefox to clear my entire browsing history on close or somehow convince my youngest to switch to Seamonkey or Kmeleon. At least the oldest refuses to use anything but his Opera. But it sucks I have to go back to FF2 just to kill the damned thing. What happened to giving us choice? And as always this is my 02c on the subject,YMMV

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[compro01]

Yes, you can. It's quite easy to disable it. The thing that is not possible it to revert to the functionality of the firefox 2 address bar (And before someone charges in here with oldbar, that only replicates the appearance, not the functionality).

To disable it, simply set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in about:config to 0. This completely disables URL autocompletion, so you have to either type the URL or use your bookmarks.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Richard_at_work]

No it doesn't, all that setting does is remove from the results your bookmarks and links you have clicked on (I think) - it still searches the titles of pages you have entered the URL for.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ShieldW0lf]

The most useful part of Awesomebar is being able to type "Firefox 3.1" or "3.1 alpha" or "shire" and have this Slashdot story in the top few items. Without the Awesomebar, you'd have to look through the titles and somehow remember that this story was on 'tech.slashdot.org'. This is more useful on forums that insist on long page titles so you can't see the thread's title in the old bar's summary, or even forums that don't include the title at all.

Right. Because typing "Firefox 3.1" in the search box on the history sidebar doesn't work?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Bat Country]

Why exactly is that convenient or logical?

If you want Youtube you should type a 'y', not 't'.

Don't even get me started on Flickr showing up when you type a 't'... The damned letter isn't even in the word.

Convenient or not, this is counterintuitive behavior which will just confuse new users of Firefox who you've been trying to convince to use it for security reasons.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rayban]

The more I use it, the more I wish it did full page keyword indexing to pull those URLs you visited so long ago you can't remember anything but a word or two.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rayban]

Doesn't that mean it shouldn't return any URLs except those starting with h(ttp)/f(tp)/etc?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mr_Silver]

In defence of the Awesome bar, I only used it for about an hour before dismissing it, but I reckon 1 hour is enough...

Actually, 1 hour isn't enough. Not by a long shot.

I've been using the Awesome bar every day at work since FF3 released and only in the past week has it become really really good at knowing what I visit often and what I don't. The problem has been that it "imported" (for want of a better phrase) my browsing history from FF2 and had to assume that every single past site i'd visited was ranked equally. Therefore it's taken a couple of weeks for this to settle down.

So either, keep at it and eventually things will start to get ranked properly - or completely blitz your browsing history and start over again. The latter will rank your favourite stuff more quickly, but you'll lose a lot of data in the process.

I love Awesome bar but I've given it a chance. I would recommend others do too.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ShieldW0lf]

a large part of which does not like this behavior

Reference, please.

This isn't a thesis proposal. It's a forum for idle chitchat. Do your own fucking research if you're interested, people come on here during brain breaks at work, they're not obligated to cite references for everything they say. Honestly, if you can't tell just from reading the threads this article inspired that there are a large number of people who don't like it, you're fucking thick in the head.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[gcalvin]

Or create separate user logins for your kids/nephews/guests at the OS level. Takes about ten seconds, and prevents them messing up lots of your preferences, while allowing them to create their own.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[redxxx]

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

No, even better, now when you use Ctrl+Tab it brings up ugly cluttered previews of the tabs, rather than just switching between them.

Now you'll have 2 things to hate about the UI.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Drathos]

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.

Um... No it isn't.

The "Awesome Bar" (terrible name, IMHO) uses both the bookmarks you create and the browser history. If you wipe out the history and haven't bookmarked anything yourself, the Awesome Bar has nothing to reference.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[billcopc]

So you're either a brilliant Googler, or you simply don't care about finding that perfect page again.

I'm the opposite, I often spend a long time searching and reading various pages until I find one that really nails the topic, so I bookmark it. There are many hours invested in my bookmarks, which hold great value and save me oodles of time in looking up hard-to-remember info. That's probably why I back them up diligently, sync them between my various PCs, and pass them along to friends. I'm like a one-man uber-quality Digg pile :)

FWIW, I like the awesome bar. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. For me, it's a nice shortcut that replaces the slow-loading CTRL-B sidebar (because I have so many bookmarks).

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[c0p0n]

First time I see anyone complaining about the Awesome Bar of Desire. Just stick to FF2 if that's what you want. Or switch to safari or opera, they're excellent browsers too. You can try https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/7637 it's not quite what you want but might help.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[moderatorrater]

What useless hyperbole. I love the awesome bar; I got to a lot of really obscure URLs during the day, and it's nice to be able to do a quick search for places I've been to. As far as I can tell, your biggest complaint is that it's different from how it used to be, much like my grandpa's biggest complaint with upgrading his computer.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[EvanED]

Assuming we only want 2 text bars in the UI, I think it makes a lot more sense to put those features in the search bar than in the address bar.

Personally, I think the search bar is pretty useless. I set it up with keyword searches so I can search from the address bar. So I think your assumption is good as far as it goes, but I also think that the search bar is about as useless as you think the Awesome Bar is. ;-)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[LargeMythicalReptile]

That's probably a duplicate of other bugs that have already been resolved. The answer seems to be "yes" for providing a way to disable this behavior.

No, it's not a duplicate--at least not of any of the bugs you link to.
The bug I linked was to have the FF2-like "match-only-the-first-characters-of-the-URL" functionality. The bugs you referenced have "search only in URLs," which is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't address the fundamental issue that if you perform a search--any search--you're breaking the expected, predictable functionality of the location bar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Haeleth]

Convenient or not, this is counterintuitive behavior which will just confuse new users of Firefox who you've been trying to convince to use it for security reasons.

Nonsense. Anyone in that category probably doesn't understand what the address bar is for anyway, and certainly wouldn't expect it to only look at the URL. Searching the page title too is the intuitive behaviour -- someone looking for Google Maps will expect to be able to type "google maps" and get it. The awesomebar does that. The dumb address bar didn't.

And just looking at the start of the text isn't good enough either. What if someone's looking for YouTube but can't remember what the full title is -- just that it's got "tube" in it? Hey, lookie here, they can type "tube" and get it!

Okay, you might argue that they should be using a search engine instead. But a search engine can't see their browser history. The awesomebar can answer the question they're implicitly asking, which is "what's the site with 'tube' in its name that I visited recently?". Google can't do that.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[nekozid]

You know you actually have to teach it, right?

Hit s, scroll to the thing you DO want, pick that.
As long as you haven't taught it that s really does mean ebay it should adapt within a few goes, done.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[lilomar]

Its pretty amusing really on some level. This is the sort of thing we routinely ridicule our less nerdy counterparts for... we mock them for their refusal to use a product called 'firefox' because it doesn't sound 'professional' like 'internet explorer'... we ridicule their inability and/or blind refusal to cope with even a slight deviation in user interface... we tell anecdotes about how we had to set Windows XP's theme to classic before our bosses could/would use it...because it was scary and different... or because it looked like 'candy' and they didn't want to use a childish OS.

And yet here we are...

My kingdom for mod points. You, sir, hit the nail on its proverbial head.

(Attn. Pedants: Yes, I know that the nail's head wasn't technically in Proverbs. Sue me.)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Carnildo]

I want it to show me urls that start with the letter I typed.

Type "w".

Opera's got a wonderful solution to this: if you type "w", you get all the URLs beginning with "w" except the ones beginning with "www". If you want one of those, you need to type in the full "www.".

Alternatively, you can type in the URL skipping the "www" part. Typing in "goog" gives you all the "http://goog*" URLs, followed by the "http://www.goog*" URLs.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[nabsltd]

I didn't use Firefox 2, so I don't know the exact functionality, but I don't think it takes much to get the "Awesome Bar" like people seem to want (matches only at the beginning of URL, no match on titles).

First install the Hide Unvisited extension. Next, set "browser.urlbar.search.chunkSize = 0" in about:config. Last, add the following to your "userChrome.css" file:

.autocomplete-richlistitem spacer,.autocomplete-richlistitemlabel{display:none}
.ac-title description{font-size:11px!important}
.autocomplete-richlistitem{border:none!important}
.ac-title{margin:-4px 4px 0px 0px!important;display:none}
.ac-url{margin:-19px 0px 0px 20px!important}
.ac-url description{color:MenuText!important}
.ac-url description[selected="true"]{color:White!important}

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[lilomar]

Look. I understand that many people wish that the devs had included an 'off' switch. But come on. Can you honestly say that you have always considered every possible aspect of something you did before others got to look at it? Isn't it just possible that all of the dev team thought that the new address bar was "Awesome" and didn't consider the fact that some might not find it so? It's not like it's a long-standing issue or something, why don't we let them at least have time to work on an update to re-integrate the old functionality as an option before we accuse them of deliberately ignoring their users?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Knuckles]

Because ever option has an associated cost in code complexity and user confusion that needs to be carefully weighed. Obviously different people can come to different conclusions here.

That said, I gather that there _will be an option in 3.1.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[pxc]

I dunno about that. I typed in "matters" and it sent me to Slashdot! How intelligent is that?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[me at werk]

So basically, eBay is doing SEO tactics, and hey, they're working! I guess it's irresponsible for a browser to assume users don't purposefully visit scummy SEO pages?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Koiu Lpoi]

If you bring in old data from Firefox 2, all those sites are listed at the same frequency, so they all come up equally until it's trained. This is why I think people hate the Awesomebar - it works perfectly if you start a new profile with FF3.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Haeleth]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mgblst]

Hated it at first too, now I love it. Give it a chance, don't fight change for the sake of it.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[afidel]

Old location bar brings back about 90% of the functionality of the 2.0 bar. I think most of what it does can be done through prefs, but it's a convenient way to make it just work.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Fallingcow]

It's not hyperbole. Awesomebar didn't give me anything I wanted, and made the one thing I do want ('x' should bring up xkcd as its first recommendation, 's' should bring up the slashdot mainpage, etc.) less reliable. I do not need the added features at all, so they are in the way. I just don't visit enough websites with the same first letters in the URL on a regular basis to make the search thing more convenient than simple autocomplete. The first day I had it, I muscle-memoried myself to the wrong place so many times that it took a couple more days of very careful tabbing to get what I wanted back to the top of the list.

In the end, I just installed an addon that gave me my old bar back. It's still slower than the old one, which sucks, since the one and only thing I didn't like about the old bar was that it was slow. *shrug* maybe in 4.0.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Drakonik]

Well, what site do you want?

If you type 't' and get those results, but want Pirate Bay, type 'h' and all the results you just listed will be wiped out. Two keypresses. Oh god, so horrible.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Stoian Ivanov]

I'm having quick searches with keywords since forever .. so I only type in one place - the address bar
gg blah googles blah
wp blah runs blah trough wikipedia
dd blah checks in dictionary.reference.com

this works best for me

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jorgevillalobos]

And here I thought Slashdot was a place were intelligent people discussed things with reasoning and an open mind instead of throwing feces around like typical forum trolls... yeah, yeah, I must be new here.

I can see lots of people complaining about the feature, that's pretty obvious, but that's hardly a measure that merits saying something that seems to indicate that the majority (or a large body) of people agree with that stance. My point is that people should make a distinction between fact and opinion, and I don't think that is too much too ask.

Having said that, yeah, my comment was a little obnoxious.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[vux984]

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

Touche.

Then again, the fact that I've been using FF3 since release and wasn't actually aware of that, ought to tell you something about how pervasively hyped the 'awesomebar' nickname is.

To the point that I thought it was the 'awesomebar' described as being a "smart" location bar... not the other way around.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[afidel]

You CAN'T turn off the awsomebar, that's the freaking point! There is one addon that mostly neuters it, but I shouldn't need an addon to get deterministic functionality. If I want a semi-random search I will use Google, at least IT is generally correct at guessing what I want, and it's only an Alt-Home away =)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[wanderingknight]

Umm, and what's the problem with integrating the functionality of the history bar into the regular address bar?

I personally always hated having to even open the history sidebar just to look for a page I visited ONCE whose address I can't remember. The new bar has been a godsend for these kinds of things.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jomas1]

If you want the FF2 style address bar go to about:config and change browser.urlbar to browser.urlbar.matchOnlytyped then restart Firefox

If you want the address bar to not match anything then go to browser.urlbar.matchBehavior, change the value in the popup to 0, and click OK
Then Double-click browser.urlbar.maxRichResults change the value in the popup to 0, and click OK then restart Firefox.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Fallingcow]

The "border image" stuff has been a long time coming too

No support in IE7, so it looks like it'll be a while before I get to use it for paying jobs.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mcpkaaos]

It really surprised me when I hit 'h' and saw every site I ever visited show up

Same thing happens if you type a period by itself (matching any period in the URL). Same for colon, forward-slash, etc. The awesome bar is a nice idea, but very clumsily implemented.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That's where assumptions get me. Still... there are for more effective ways of getting porn than use of web sites ;)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[luserSPAZ]

Why? I don't want to search for "Dashiel Hammett", I want to get back to that Wikipedia page *I already visited* on Dashiel Hammit. If I'm typing in the location bar, and it's going to autocomplete, I clearly want it to give me results from history.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mrdoogee]

I don't like the awesomebar, but about 5 minutes on about:config and now it acts like FF2 again. or if you are lazy or afraid of changing settings manually, you can just download the "oldbar" extention.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[fractalrock]

Awesomebar:
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults sets the number of results in the drop-down. Setting this to "0" will effectively disable the auto-complete, but you'll need to restart the browser for this to take effect.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mrand]

There are now more ways to configure the Smart Location (Awesome Bar) functionality which should make most complaints go away:

http://ed.agadak.net/2008/07/firefox-31-restricts-matches-keywords

I'm sure that this reply will get lost in the noise of all the other "I hate Awesome Bar" replies.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mrdoogee]

Unless you use Stumbleupon. If you do, every page you give a "Thumbs Up" to goes in a new folder in the "tags" section of your bookmarks. Which is fine, except the Awesome Bar indexes them too, so even if you dump your History and clear all private data, SU and the Awesome Bar will still list all your "thumbs up"ed pages.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Blue Stone]

>>although it has a painfully stupid name that makes me want to hate it already
>That's really the -biggest- strike against it.

Biggest? Not for me. That it reveals what porn sites I've visited to all and sundry, when I type in an address that begins with the same few letters, to show someone, and there's no function in the privacy options to clear those sites from coming up like that. Clear History won't get rid of them. That's the biggest strike against it.

FF3 is not so much a fox as a rat!

That's why I uninstalled it and went back to FF2. (since switching the smart location bar off in config, didn't actually clear the list of sites ... which were all still there when I turned it back on again to check).

IMO, FF3 unlike FF2 is not a privacy-friendly browser.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash, just type a *SECOND* or even *THIRD* character and amazingly watch as the awesome bar figures out much more accurately which website you are attempting to visit. Its like me only entering 1 character reply to your post and expecting you to know what I'm talking about, you, and the awesomebar can only act on the information its given, and if the information is incomplete then mistakes will happen.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[hairyfeet]

I have way too many programs that run 24/7/365 to have to deal with multiple logins just for a browser. Not to mention we are talking about a 1.1GHz Celeron running Win2K,which doesn't need a bunch of users slowing it down and doesn't have XPs fast user switching. Besides we are talking about a browser here. I shouldn't have to redesign my OS user layout because somebody at FF forgot to add an off switch to the awesome bar.

IMHO this shows what is wrong with a lot of software design today: expecting the user to build everything around your awesome software instead of the other way around. Throw more memory at it,use only the latest OS,uninstalls that don't work because nobody should want to uninstall your fabulous program,etc. When all I need is a freakin' off switch for the awesome bar. That's all,just a simple checkbox. Hell,even a hack in about:config would do it. So instead I'll either manage to talk my youngest into using Kmeleon or Seamonkey,or more likely I'll have to switch. All because somebody at FF couldn't add an off button. Oh well,at least I managed to get Adblock and Noscript running in Kmeleon. And as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Evanisincontrol]

The drop-down menu history is VERY useful as a temporary set of bookmarks which you will only need for a short period (say a month) and don't want to litter your real bookmarks with.

Do you often find yourself running into sites that you know you will visit a lot, but only for a short time? I'm not sure I can think of any examples of what you mean.

I'll take a wild stab and assume you're talking about something like an ebay auction that you'll want to check on repeatedly, but only until the auction ends? Ok, fair enough... but that's what the history (Ctrl+H) window is for.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[morari]

Trolling? The "Awesome Bar" is horrid. It's like auto-complete on steroids! I just want a drop down of the addresses that I actually typed in. Anything beyond that should not come up. I have bookmarks for a reason.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ShieldW0lf]

Personally, I hate that I can't type in a URL, scroll down to the script I'm working on, select it, hit backspace twice and change the value of a parameter to another parameter and hit enter.

I don't like having to read a garish pile of crap, I don't like having the webpage entitled "Gangbang Sluts" I was looking at the night before coming up in the search results the next morning while my kid is there, I just want to see an autocomplete of URLs I've typed before so I can hit down arrow with my pinkie a couple of times and get to the one I want.

This should have been implemented as another option in the search bar. That's what it is, after all, a non-deterministic search of things completely unrelated to the URL. It's not like Firefox users have a hard time using the search bar, and it would have been much better to give more prominence to that bar and leave the location bar alone.

In my opinion.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MagdJTK]

News for nerds. Stuff that matters.

(queue the whoosh)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[macshit]

In defence of the Awesome bar, I only used it for about an hour before dismissing it, but I reckon 1 hour is enough...

Not necessarily. I used the FF2 simple address-bar matching heavily, so FF3's "enhancements" really screwed up my habits; moreever, it was a lot slower than FF2's matching. I found it quite annoying.

After a few weeks, though, I got used to the FF3 behavior, and indeed it does seem a lot more useful on average than FF2's simple functionality (it's still slower, but recently I bought a faster machine anyway...). It can take some time to get over your old habits though.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[daniel_newton]

you can restrict to only the url in FF3.1 alpha by using "@"

see => http://ed.agadak.net/2008/07/firefox-31-restricts-matches-keywords

For Alpha 1, you can restrict the search to your history by typing "^", or bookmarks with "*", or tagged pages with "+". To make what you've typed match only in the URL type "@", and for title/tags only use "#".

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[TriggerFin]

Dagnabit, I already have previews of the tabs in in the Showcase Sidebar!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[complete loony]

My biggest grief with the awesomebar is it also seems to remember mistyped URL's, pages with a 404 result, or redirects. Why on earth would I want to revisit a site that doesn't exist???

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[me at werk]

Yeah, the only option I'd like to see would be to tell it that I do like the feature searching in the middle of title, but instead of using 'contains' it could use 'starts with' or example. This might fuck up people who forgot the full name of battlestar galactica and typed 'star', but as long as it's an option would it make you happier?

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mardak]

I don't want to type it in everytime I want to go there

I only used it for about an hour before dismissing it, but I reckon 1 hour is enough...

Did you even revisit slashdot within that one hour? Once you type in slashdot.org the first time, it should show up pretty high in the list when you type "s". It could even show up as the first result when you click the drop-down if you visit the site frequent enough.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mardak]

If I type "e", the first hit is...http://www.cnn.com. Because I visit that site frequently, and there's an "E" in the title. I would much prefer the first hit to be a site whose URL starts with "e", or at least one that uses "e" in some meaningful rather than meaningless keyword. (There are several such sites in my history, but I only visit them occasionally.)

So you're saying the Smart Location Bar found a page that you're more likely to use than an uncommon one? If you really want to have one of those infrequently visited pages to be at top, you'll actually have to select it from the list. I guarantee that it'll be first next time if you've never picked out CNN for "e".

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mardak]

The Smart Location Bar searches your history and bookmarks, so even if you clear your history, it can still search your bookmarks. So the reason why your location bar is still showing your porn sites even after clearing history is because you've got them bookmarked. In Firefox 3.1, you can change a preference to default search only your *visited* history (and not your unvisited bookmarks). http://ed.agadak.net/2008/07/firefox-31-restricts-matches-keywords

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[aeoo]

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.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[magus_melchior]

And bring your Nerf bats for the inevitable (and hopefully friendly) beating Rik's about to endure!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[vux984]

Biggest? Not for me. That it reveals what porn sites I've visited to all and sundry, when I type in an address that begins with the same few letters, to show someone, and there's no function in the privacy options to clear those sites from coming up like that. Clear History won't get rid of them. That's the biggest strike against it.

That's actually a legitimate gripe.

I know there is a way to prevent FF3 from showing any results which is a half assed workaround. I suspect there *is* a way of 'purging' whatever its list is. But I think that's a fundamentally ass-backwards way to deal with it anyway... I want to keep bookmarks, and history, and whatnot. That's USEFUL to me. In fact that useful for both 'clean family/work related stuff' and the 'pr0n'. I don't want to lose either. I just don't want the two to MIX.

So that said, I'd suggest a completely different solution... you can run FF with multiple profiles. Just create and use the 'other' one for pr0n etc. (look in the help for 'profile manager'.) Then you can keep the history, and make bookmarks, and so on, without worrying about your kids/wife/family being confronted with them.

My main profile is the default, and I have a password protected alternative launched via a separate shortcut for when I go browsing in places I don't want to confront my family with... not that I mind my wife -knowing- where I go...or anything; but if I've got my brother over, or my parents, or I'm pulling stuff up with my daughter -- I agree that it would be one of inappropriate/embarassing/offensive/etc for that stuff to be popping up.

Some people use a separate browser. Some people use a separate use account.

Finally, if you are actually want to hide all traces of what you did, from someone who might be searching your computer for evidence you were looking at pr0n to use against you... then again, a separate profile is the way to go... just delete it when you are done. (and overwrite it with zeroes, etc, etC) Personally I'd find it far more 'suspicious' to find a browser that had had its history cleared, and so forth. By using a separate profile, you can leave the default one clean and intact... so if someone browses your history -- well now there still -is- one, and its all nice and clean.

cheers.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[amRadioHed]

Clear History won't get rid of them. That's the biggest strike against it.

Really? I've never seen something come up in the address bar that wasn't in the history.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[TedRiot]

I hated the new bar in FF3 at first. I had some patterns using the address bar in FF2, which, at first didn't bring the correct results, but I decided to stick with FF3 anyway. I noticed soon, that at first I had to type 2 or maybe 3 letters for sites that I frequently visit and after choosing the desired URL a couple of times, it starts to appear at the top after just 1 letter. So it learned to behave (for me) like the address bar in FF2.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[DMUTPeregrine]

I hate the bookmarks toolbar. Another toolbar taking up screen space just for a few bookmarks, when my address bar can autocomplete from those same bookmarks?! Why?
I'm a bit extreme though, I use the classic compact theme, remove all buttons, and move the location and quicksearch bars (and the throbber, etc) from the navigation toolbar up to the menu bar. I then remove all other bars, and use all-in-one-sidebar for extra stuff. Very compact ui.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[MROD]

Yes I do. In fact things that I'm only interested in for a couple of days and then want to forget forever.

I don't want to have to open a new window, open a new panel, use the keyboard. I merely want to use the same URL I typed in a while ago via a couple of clicks of the mouse.

The awsomebar clutter is merely noise which just gets in the way of the job at hand for me.

It should be an option as there are some people who love it but it should be easily removed. After all searching and entering an address (URL) are very different things. (And yes, I do always type in protocol type before an address. I know what I want and I expect the browser to just be my slave.)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[TedRiot]

Use firefox -profilemanager and surf your pr0n with a different profile. If only there was a way to start two instances of firefox with different profiles..

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[pugugly]

I will confess - the *name* 'Awesome Bar' gives me hives.

That said - I find it to be pretty intuitive and useful - in combination with tags and keywords, it makes the system work pretty darn well.

But yeah, whoever came up with that name should be strapped into a chair and forced to watch 1980's John Hughes movies translated into "Valley Girl" and interspersed with "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell" commercials.

We're not cruel though - cyanide pills will be made available.

Pug

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[strikethree]

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.

So what are bookmarks then? Honestly, if I am typing in the URL bar, I want to type a URL, not have the damned software try to guess what I want. Firefox 2 is good enough (with noscript and adblock).

strike

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[strikethree]

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.

Kaching. We have a winner here folks. This is one of a very few comments that I would like to see modded more than +5.

strike

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Blue Stone]

Thanks, I'll look into the prospect of using a new profile. It's still extra effort compared to what FF2 does for me now - delete everything, history, cache, non-protected cookies, etc, as a matter of course, but if (when) FF2 stops being supported it might be the only option.

A shame, because it certainly feels like a step backward in flexibility and user freedom.

For those that don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiretoko = Longbottom Leaf

1420 was a great year!

Re:For those that don't know

[MrNaz]

And here I was thinking it was a place where Hobbits got stoned.

Re:For those that don't know

[rufus t firefly]

And here I was thinking it was a place where Hobbits got stoned.

Again, almost spit milk out my nose. Nice. Kinda like pointing out that Gran Paradiso sounds like an old hooker.

Re:For those that don't know

[Randle_Revar]

Source? I am not seeing that anywhere on the net. All I see are references to a place in Japan.

Coming up

[JiminyJones]

Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2: Bunshin Daibakuha. Download it if you dare (to try reading its name).

Codename?

[MrNaz]

Is that a Japanese word, or a reference to Hobbits smoking pot?

Re:Codename?

[hansamurai]

Shiretoko Peninsula is pretty much the most northeastern point of Japan on the island of Hokkaido. It's an Ainu word that means earth's end or something similar (the Ainu are an indigenous people that still live there).

Re:Codename?

[Spy der Mann]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiretoko :

Shiretoko may refer to:

        * A place in Hokkaido, Japan:
                    o Shiretoko National Park
                    o Shiretoko Peninsula

        * The code name for Mozilla Firefox 3.1.

Re:Codename?

[shiftless]

While we're on the subject, why does every application/operating system on the fucking planet need to have a fancy codename for every release, or for ANY release for that matter? For example, Ubuntu-- it irritates the shit out of me having to remember all these release names (Hoary, Gutsy, etc etc). Which one is the newest? Which one am I running? Who the fuck knows? If developers want to use these code names internally, I don't really care, but don't expect me (the end user) to remember this arbitrary bullshit.

Re:Codename?

[JanneM]

You don't need to remember. The Ubuntu names are not the official designation. The version number is. The current version is 8.04, easily distinguishable from earlier versions by virte of being a larger number than previous ones. Neither are the Firefox names official; again the important designation is the version number with which you can easily (and perhaps with the help of an adult) figure out which version is the newest.

Isn't it great, huh?

Re:Codename?

[MagdJTK]

Which one is the newest? Which one am I running? Who the fuck knows?

For the last couple of years, Ubuntu has gone:

• Dapper
• Edgy
• Fiesty
• Gusty
• Hardy
• Intrepid.

I'll leave you to spot the pattern.

Re:Codename?

[Matt Perry]

The Ubuntu names are not the official designation.

Whether they are official or not doesn't help when they are used so much that they have become the de facto identifiers.

Re:Codename?

[magus_melchior]

If you brute-force a translation, "Foolishness and wisdom". Or "Let's fool them all."

But more likely, a national park.

Re:Codename?

[Heian-794]

Solely for the trivia buffs, but "Shiretoko" is the Japanified pronunciation of the Ainu word "sir-e-tok", where the letter s can be either an English "s" or "sh" sound -- the Japanese language can't handle consonants other than "n" at the end of a word, and with Ainu they repeat the previous vowel at the end. So Ainu "kiror" (strength) and "yukar" (tale of the gods) become "kiroro" and "yukara".

The same word "shir", meaning "land", is found in the place "Kunashir", called "Kunashiri" by the Japanese.

There's another word "siretok" in Masayoshi Shibatani's The Language of Japan (an excellent book about Japanese and Ainu), which means "beauty", but this might not be the same word.

In any case, it sure would be cool to see a Firefox with a name in the genuine endangered Ainu language. How about we call it "Shiretok" instead? The few hundred remaining speakers of Ainu would be honored.

I'll be more than happy to try it

[atari2600]

If the build fixes my Gmail Firefox3 woes. I didn't have any issues with Firefox3b5 on Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) but ever since I upgraded to FF3.0 and (even 3.0.1 doesn't address my issue), Gmail and firefox3 hate each other.

Re:I'll be more than happy to try it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problems running FF3 with 2 and 3 tabs of different Gmail accounts open. I've only done this on Win2k, XP and Vista though.

Have you tried disabling all of your extensions to see if any of them are causing the problem?

Re:I'll be more than happy to try it

[snl2587]

Or, having tried that, clearing your cache?

Re:I'll be more than happy to try it

[atari2600]

FF3 is just fine on my XP gaming machine. It's just FF3 + Ubuntu 8.04 = headache. Yes all my extensions are off, I cleaned out the cache and removed every trace of FF on my machine (including apt cache) before reinstalling FF. It's a change that Gmail has made that's causing me (and a few people) grief. If I put Gmail in the "Older version" mode, all is well.

Re:I'll be more than happy to try it

[Spy der Mann]

I have FF3 on PCLinuxOS and GMail runs just fine for me.

Re:I'll be more than happy to try it

[me at werk]

Well, @firefox_answers is blaming addons. And if he's doing it, that's probably the official reason from Mozilla (I don't think they'd let someone abuse their trademarks so blatantly for long otherwise, and he's been around for a few months).

Warning! Do not install!

[Channard]

This may cause red water to leak out of your computer and turn your neighbours into homicidal maniacs. Oh wait, that's Shibito - never mind.

download it if you dare?

[Randle_Revar]

Bah, I have run the nightly builds of SeaMonkey over a year. Even with the nightlies, there are rarely any really serious problems.

woohoo!

[lucas teh geek]

it's only taken 6 years, but finally Firefox has the option to use the Mac OS X System specified proxy. here's hoping it actually works

Re:woohoo!

[kestasjk]

Makes you wonder why OS X couldn't set the BSD http_proxy variable; is the BSD userland configuration really that separate from OS X?

Re:woohoo!

[roger6106]

Sadly they still haven't fixed the Mac OS X copy and paste (with formatting) bug.

Re:woohoo!

[wumpus188]

If only it also used Mac OS X Keychain for passwords...

For Hoes That Don't Know

[negRo_slim]

It probably is seeing as how it is a national park in Japan.

Posting this from Shiretoko...

[Doug Neal]

The rendering seems faster (not that it was slow in 3.0.1). Still doesn't pass Acid3, though ;)

Re:Posting this from Shiretoko...

[n3xg3n]

yea, but it got closer (83/100)

Re:Posting this from Shiretoko...

[me at werk]

The official word from blog.mozilla.com is that acid3 is basically worthless.

Re:Posting this from Shiretoko...

[me at werk]

Shaver posted on The Missed Opportunity of Acid3.

Re:Posting this from Shiretoko...

[jesser]

That's a post on Rob Sayre's blog, which happens to be hosted on blog.mozilla.com. That doesn't make it the official Mozilla word on the acid 3 test.

Re:Posting this from Shiretoko...

[me at werk]

OK JESSE RUDERMAN

Hmm, not sure about this

[neokushan]

The build includes a new tab-switching behavior that will force some users to change their habits. In the current version of FIrefox, Control-Tab opens up the next browser tab. Shiretoko changes this behavior, opening up a "filmstrip view" of a user's most-recently visited tabs. Pressing Tab repeatedly while holding down the Control key cycles through the various Tabs in a filmstrip. Developers say the filmstrip addition is a step toward "increased visual navigation and content organization."(Users who simply want to advance to the next tab can use Control-Page Down instead of Control-Tab).

I, personally, do not use Ctrl+tab to switch between tabs in firefox but I do not like the idea of them changing this functionality. In various other programs I use that have tabs, from mIRC to Visual studio (no, sorry, I haven't switched to *nix yet), ctrl+tab is the natural choice to swap between open tabs/windows and I do occasionally use this command here. It just seems universally consistent between most applications and Mozilla has decided to move away from this unofficial standard.
Wouldn't it be better to give this new functionality a new shortcut key, such as the aforementioned ctrl+pgdn?
Even Microsoft created a new shortcut key combination for Flip3D in vista and left the old alt+tab command more or less in tact.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[FlyingBishop]

Yeah, I've been using the nightly builds for a month. It showed up last week. Open about:config in the url bar, search on ctrlTab, and set the boolean to balse. That will clear it up.

The problem with the ctrl+tab vs ctrl+pgup/dn is that Gnome has this (bizarre) convention of bascially this functionality. (Minus the eye candy.) Me, I would prefer that they reverse it, as you suggest, but the Gnome defaults win (despite disagreeing with every other default I know.) Also, the developers believe that this behavior is more useful than the former behavior, so they want it in a more easily accessible hotkey.

I disagree, since Firefox takes longer to shrink the pages and display a thumbnails than it would just to display the tabs in full, in quick succession.

However, strictly speaking, the Firefox team is just copying this 'feature' from Opera. And if Opera's doing it, it must be the best thing since sliced bread (usability is so passé.)

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[D Ninja]

Additionally, with Ctrl+Tab (and not with Ctrl+PgDn) I can keep one hand on the keyboard and the other on my...mouse...um...for scrolling and stuff...um...

...you know...so I can browse and flip between pic...err...windows...err...

Crap.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[martinmarv]

That's good news that there's a configuration setting to change this.
The worrying thing is that there were pieces of new Firefox 3.0 behaviour which were "switch-offable" in the alpha builds, but for which the configuration settings were removed later. For example, being able to switch off the AwesomeBar and being able to specify a permanent "Go" button in the URL bar (now you must install an extension to get the behaviour back).
I hope the developers do keep the ability to switch the Ctrl-Tab behaviour. Otherwise it will mean I stick with 3.0 or install YAFP (yet-another-Firefox-plugin).

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[number17]

The reason I like ctrl+tab is that it only requires use of one hand. Ctrl+pgdn requires me to remove my hand from the mouse.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[dashesy]

It would be another stupid decision, like hiding the "clear list" button from download manager. Maybe M$ IE agents have sneaked into developers team to claim the old IE empire back!

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[consonant]

Like another commenter said, Ctrl + Tab is convenient 'cos it's a single hand action. And this is how Alt + Tab works for open windows (in Windows 2k/XP and KDE, last I checked) anyway. Also, personally, Ctrl + PgDn/Up makes sense to me, that being the key combo for moving back and forth between sheets in a large MS Excel file..

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[l0cust]

What are you talking about? There is a "clear list" button right where it should be in the download manager(3.0.1)

But apart from that I agree that it will be stupid to change the current functionality to make way for a new one they just cooked up. Ctrl+Tab is way more convenient to switch between tabs than Ctrl+pgDown and I don't think the performance of a fancy filmstrip thumbnail thingy is going to be as good as a simple tab switch, specially when you are one of those who surf with a ton of tabs open.

I really don't understand this new thinking in the ff dev team. Sure, it may look fancy and some people may actually switch to use it instead of the ol' tab switch but why change the current settings and piss off the users who are already used to it. If you want to add this functionality this much then give it a different key combo and give an option in the setting/config to change it if the user wants to later on. Saying something like "a new tab-switching behavior that will force some users to change their habits" comes off as really arrogant as doesn't do any good for their image.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[Lalo Martins]

New shortcut key? Ctrl-PgDn has been around forever, in fact it's what I use, because there's also Ctrl-PgUp.

Making Ctrl-Tab show a "filmstrip" makes it more similar to Alt-Tab, and much more useful for switching to tabs that are farther away.

"Insightful"? Really? In what way?

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[dashesy]

I was talking about the 3.0 beta version that came as default with Ubuntu Hardy. I am so happy they decided to keep the good ol usability intact :)

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[Haeleth]

My keyboard doesn't have a right Ctrl key, you insensitive clod!

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[MeditationSensation]

Argh! I agree completely. They have been changing things just for the sake of changing them, it seems like. I hated those arrows/number of displayed tabs restriction when it came out. I've kind of gotten used to it, but I still think there's a better way (e.g. rows of tabs when it overflows). Also the close browser functionality changed. It used to be a simple warning for closing multiple tabs, but now there are extra options and save states... just a mess.

Why do they keep breaking the UI? Just leave alone stuff that works. Focus on security, stability, and performance.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[whitehatlurker]

Digging deeper into TFA, I see that this ctrl-tab was someone's add-in that got included, because one of the developers ("user experience designer") liked it.

I can only say it is a real shame that no-one has noticed any of the mouse gesture add-ons and would like to incorporate mouse gestures and wheel-based tab switching natively.

Disclosure: my main browser is Opera. I do use Seamonkey and Firefox (as well as other browsers). I currently use Firegestures, and have used Optimoz and "All-in-one gestures" in the past.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[LiquidFire_HK]

About time applications started catching up. Nothing more stupid than having 5 tabs open and to go to the previous one you had open you need to rotate through all of them.

You could already do that - Ctrl+Shift+Tab goes back one tab. Just as Alt+Shift+Tab goes back when switching windows.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[LiquidFire_HK]

Bad form replying to myself but I realize you meant something else and my comment was irrelevant. In that case, I agree, it's an improvement, provided they don't mess it up like Opera did. And if there is a small delay for the switcher appearing - I don't want it blinking while I'm just switching to the next tab.

But then the window switcher in Window blinks, so I guess I'm already used to that.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[FlyingBishop]

The trouble is, the Awesome bar isn't just a matter of a configuration setting - the code behind the awesome bar is entirely different from that behind the old url bar. Configuration setttings are for making trivial functionality changes (like making functionality available via one hotkey also available via another hotkey.) No real coding involved, just change a couple of words.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[martinmarv]

Well, perhaps, but the setting I'm referring to is mentioned on the discussion on the following Firefox bug report:-
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=407836

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[MagdJTK]

I heard it feels like someone else is using the mouse if you do that.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[magus_melchior]

Someone's using a laptop with only one Ctrl key. If you had a full keyboard, you could manage Ctrl-PgUp/Dn unless your hands were hooves.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[bannerman]

I use ctrl-tab to swap windows all the time and this is a major UI breaking deal for me. I will have to use a plugin or something to revert to the old ctrl-tab functionality. Ctrl-T already opens a new tab. Why mess up what works and is standard in all Windows applications? This is a huge mistake.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[cskaryd]

> Wouldn't it be better to give this new functionality a new shortcut key, such as the aforementioned ctrl+pgdn?

No! I've been using Ctrl+PgDn for a while to switch tabs. This isn't a NEW shortcut, but an existing one. So they'd be replacing this EXISTING shortcut, which is what you're advocating against.

Resizable text fields?

[Macka]

I really hope they include this. Have got very used to having it in Safari, but am using Firefox more and more these days. I plan to switch to Firefox completely when I can get a Weave account and sync up across the different (mixed OS) desktops I use.

Re:Resizable text fields?

[larry bagina]

Too bad we don't have access to the source code :( If this was an open source project, we'd be able to add in features like that.

Re:Resizable text fields?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Agreed. Resizable text fields and support for OS X system services are the two biggest advantages of Safari over Firefox these days. Safari is a bit faster, but Firefox has plug-in functionality. Hopefully both Safari and Firefox will continue to copy useful features from one another.

Sadly, resizable text fields are not in Shiretoko, nor does it support OS X services or use the native spelling checker (which is a service).

On the plus side it manages an 83/100 on the Acid3 test (up from 67) and on my system scores 3426 on the Sunspider java speed test (faster than the 4330 score in Firefox 3.0 and 7516 on Safari 3.1.2).

Re:Resizable text fields?

[teg]

Too bad we don't have access to the source code :( If this was an open source project, we'd be able to add in features like that.

You can find out how to get the firefox source code here and the web kit/safari source code here.

Re:Resizable text fields?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You can find out how to get the firefox source code here [mozilla.org] and the web kit/safari source code here [webkit.org].

You have a point, but I suspect the hardest part of allowing text fields o be resized is in the source for Safari (the front end whose source is not available) not in Webkit. Webkit allows text boxes to be style-able, but I'm not convinced that's really enough to make it easy to pull the feature in Firefox. Hopefully, however, Firefox developers see how useful it is and copy it.

Re:Resizable text fields?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Until I can globally turn off spellcheck-as-you-type, I don't want Firefox using OS X services...

Right-click on any field, select "Spelling and Grammar", select "Check Spelling While Typing". Alternately, you can move the AppleSpell.service out of the global Services directory to disable it completely.

Re:Resizable text fields?

[me at werk]

That's bug 167951 and still has not been fixed (but it's really an enhancement, so I can understand the non-priority).

Re:Resizable text fields?

[Macka]

Perhaps spell checking is a build time option, or a hidden configuration choice. FF doesn't have it on OS X, or OpenSUSE 11; but it does on Ubuntu 8.04 and it's enabled by default too. So it's definitely possible.

Certificate madness banished too?

[MROD]

I do hope that they've made optional the terrible self-signed certificate warnings as well. They make Firefox 3 totally unusable with embedded software/devices which generate self-signed certificates every time they start up.

Fine, by default have the current set-up but allow users to revert to the old pop-up system so that they can keep their sanity if they know what they're doing!

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

Why would an embedded device generate a new self-signed certificate each time it is started? That's insecure, unless you verify the self-signed certificate each time it changes. The fact that Firefox requests that you do that helps you to be more secure. If for some reason there's no need to verify the self-signed certificate, then there's no reason the embedded device needs to generate one, so the problem lies with the device.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[MROD]

It does so because it has to probably. And seeing as the device is on a private network usig a private address range there's very little probability of spoofing. (It's not man in the middle attacking as such that the "certified" certificate is guarding against as both are equally invulnerable once the encrypted connection has been established.)

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[TheRaven64]

Generating a new certificate on reboot makes sense, as long as it's signed with one in the box that doesn't change. You then trust the signing certificate, and the signed certificates are disposable. My guess would be that Firefox gives you the option to trust the signed certificate but not the signing certificate.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[JesseMcDonald]

My guess would be that Firefox gives you the option to trust the signed certificate but not the signing certificate.

If you're referring to the dialog (or pseudo-page) that appears when the certificate is first encountered, that is correct. One can always go into the preferences and add the signing certificate as a trusted root certificate authority, however. The process isn't automated due to the obvious security implications, but it is an option nonetheless.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[Khazunga]

Certificates provide two features:

1. Domain authentication and,
2. Communication encryption

Embedded devices usually require encryption only, with no need for domain authentication. Further, they may not have permanent storage for the self-generated certificate.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

It has to because it has to? Talk about begging the question. Why would it have to?

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

As has been pointed out on Slashdot many times before, encryption does no good if you don't know who you're talking to. In that case, you're vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[Ash-Fox]

If the 'attacker' can only monitor the connections, not intercept and rewrite data, this encryption works fine for those purposes.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

How would you (or Firefox) be able to determine what the capabilities of the attacker are? The bottom line is that if you do not validate a security certificate, you are potentially vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. If you have a physically secured office and the embedded device is on your desk next to your computer, perhaps you are safe. But how could Firefox possibly know that?

To avoid the problem with the certificate changing every reboot, all the embedded device would have to do is generate self-signed certificates from a fixed seed rather than from a random seed. That way, the self-signed certificates would be the same each time, and the device would not need any electronically writable storage for the certificate. Or you could add the signing certificate the device uses as a trusted certificate authority in Firefox.

If you still think there's a problem in Firefox, could you offer a concrete suggestion that would fix this problem and not introduce security issues for other users?

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[Ash-Fox]

How would you (or Firefox) be able to determine what the capabilities of the attacker are?

I could determine it by the network setup.

The bottom line is that if you do not validate a security certificate, you are potentially vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack.

Potentially.

If you have a physically secured office and the embedded device is on your desk next to your computer, perhaps you are safe. But how could Firefox possibly know that?

I'm not arguing about what Firefox should know or not. I am not the original poster and I was merely pointing out where that limited security works.

If you still think there's a problem in Firefox, could you offer a concrete suggestion that would fix this problem and not introduce security issues for other users?

I differ from the original poster, as I don't see anything wrong with what Firefox does with certificates currently.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[Colde]

I agree the process to add an exception is a bit long and overly complicated.

That being said, having a device generate a new self-signed cert on every boot seems like really bad security. It more or less invites man-in-the-middle attacks, since you are not relying on the SSL cert to be the same. So as long as an attacker presents you with a self-signed cert you would just accept it.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[MROD]

Of course if it uses a fixed seed then your encryption is stuffed 'cos it's easily cracked if you can determine the seed. However, it's up to the sysadmin to know the address of the embedded device. Most of the time you use a numeric address anyway as the address of the device is part of a non-routable address range, often on a non-standard port. (The awsome bar gets in the way of this as well)

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[MROD]

Because the device doesn't store one? Or maybe a manager of the dev team decided that he wasn't going to assign programming resources to implement it?

Us users have no say over what the embedded firmware of devices does. Arguing about what should be is pointless as it won't change anything.

Unfortunately, if Firefix doesn't allow me to switch back to the old behaviour by the time they stop supporting FF2 I will be forced to change bowsers.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[MROD]

P.S. The way to fix this without affecting other users is to make an option in about:config to switch to the old FF2 behaviour.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[Khazunga]

We're talking embedded devices here. Stuff like my wireless router. Try to do a DNS poisoning attack or a man-in-the-middle when I'm typing the IP in the address bar and have the device on my network segment...

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

The bottom line is that what you are doing is insecure. Firefox is trying to help by getting you verify the certificates to keep you secure. If you decide that Firefox is needlessly nagging you, switching to another browser seems like a reasonable course of action. Lots of users seem to like Opera.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

You've already admitted you don't verify the certificates. Your encryption is stuffed anyway.

Also, a fixed seed need not be insecure. If it is a different random seed for each device, it is just as secure as the random seed used to generate certificates when you manually generate them. Of course, you wouldn't be able to generate a new certificate if the original one was compromised, but you don't seem concerned about security anyway.

Re:Certificate madness banished too?

[bunratty]

You can set browser.ssl_override_behavior to 2 to simplify adding security certificates. Remember that you actually need to verify the certificate to ensure that the encryption will prevent others from decrypting your communications.

Faster?

[MikeyG79]

Does it use less memory and run faster?

Will it finally print selections again?

[D4C5CE]

(Apparently not in Firefox 3 for some strange reason...)

And maybe even print full URLs ?

Re:Will it finally print selections again?

[bunratty]

That was fixed two weeks ago in Firefox 3.0.1.

Preferences Applications empty

[HTH NE1]

Can it allow the user to create new application associations when the operating system fails to provide any (i.e. the Preferences > Applications tab is blank)?

Re:Canvas Element / API

[kevin_conaway]

I don't think I'm understanding what this is. What W3C specification exists for a Javascript drawing API?

HTML 5

I don't want Firefox embracing and extending web protocols. The other changes are in line with W3C specs, but this sounds like a cool whizzbang thing that developers might like. I don't want that stuff in there. If you want a drawing API, use Flash, or Java, or something else.

Thankfully, we don't have uninformed luddites like yourself on the development staff

Re:Canvas Element / API

[bunratty]

Canvas is part of HTML5, which was created by WHATWG. WHATWG is now part of the W3C, so canvas is a specification coming from the W3C. If you don't want canvas in web browsers, take it up with WHATWG and W3C, not Mozilla developers.

Re:Canvas Element / API

[AKAImBatman]

What W3C specification exists for a Javascript drawing API?

HTML5. Which is itself a W3C dump of the ongoing work over at the WHATWG. Here's the specific W3C text on Canvas:

The canvas element represents a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly.

Authors should not use the canvas element in a document when a more suitable element is available. For example, it is inappropriate to use a canvas element to render a page heading: if the desired presentation of the heading is graphically intense, it should be marked up using appropriate elements (typically h1) and then styled using CSS and supporting technologies such as XBL.

When authors use the canvas element, they should also provide content that, when presented to the user, conveys essentially the same function or purpose as the bitmap canvas. This content may be placed as content of the canvas element. The contents of the canvas element, if any, are the element's fallback content.

In interactive visual media, if the canvas element is with script, the canvas element represents an embedded element with a dynamically created image.

In non-interactive, static, visual media, if the canvas element has been previously painted on (e.g. if the page was viewed in an interactive visual medium and is now being printed, or if some script that ran during the page layout process painted on the element), then the canvas element represents embedded content with the current image and size. Otherwise, the element represents its fallback content instead.

In non-visual media, and in visual media if the canvas element is without script, the canvas element represents its fallback content instead.

The work over at the WHATWG is a collaboration between Mozilla, Opera, and Apple. Microsoft was offered to contribute, but they declined. (Though a few Microsofties have been seen on the mailing lists as of late.)

Random Crashes FTW

[FlyingBishop]

I hope they didn't use a build from this week. If you're using a nightly (or the alpha), I dare you to double click in this box.

Didn't crash? Ok, highlight this text, double click, and frantically click. Maybe try to copy the text just for fun.

If you're still here, either you're a smart little coward hiding behind your non-development browser, or they've fixed the bug.

Re:Random Crashes FTW

[Ash-Fox]

Nope, not crashing at all.

I'm running this under Kubuntu Linux hardy on the Asus Eee PC.

Re:Random Crashes FTW

[bunratty]

No crash for me on Windows XP with Firefox 3.1 alpha 1. Looks like they fixed the bug.

Re:Random Crashes FTW

[bunratty]

Firefox 3.1 alpha 1 is a build from last week. The bug hadn't been introduced yet.

Haha. No, this is why

[johannesg]

It comes up with all my carefully hidden pr0n links, which can lead to embarrassing situations when someone else is using my computer.

Really, that's all that's wrong with the awesome bar...

Re:Haha. No, this is why

[afidel]

Um, you're doing it wrong, you should be enjoying that stuff WITH your wife =)

Awesome bar disable:

[GameboyRMH]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Now hand in your geek badge and your PDA, you're on hardware lugging duty for the next 3 months.

Re:Awesome bar disable:

[rubberglove]

from the add-on page you link to:

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

I like (and use) the oldbar extension, but all it does is change the look of the location bar. It's still 'awesome'.

Re:Awesome bar disable:

[Richard_at_work]

*sigh* someone always posts this - all that addon does is make it *look* like the old bar, it doesn't change the behaviour.

Canvas Element and support for border images?

[Yvan256]

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.

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[BZ]

Um... -moz-box-shadow support is in this alpha, for what it's worth.

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[Yvan256]

Thanks for the info, I never install alpha or beta versions (gotta stick with official releases to test websites).

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[BZ]

For what it's worth, on Mac and Linux installing two different Firefox versions side by side is easy. On Windows, you can do it if you install in a different directory from the installer, I think. I haven't checked recently.

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[Yvan256]

It's not because I can't, it's because I don't bother to test with alpha and beta versions. No need to waste hours to hunt down a bug when you don't really know if the problem comes from the browser.

I'm glad to see that Firefox will join Safari in supporting both corner-radius and box-shadow. I hope the next Opera update will add both, because right now it doesn't support either!

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[BZ]

While fair enough, that also means that if there's a bug that affects your site it might not get reported and fixed... I see no reason to spend hours making your site work in the browser, but if you're willing to take a few minutes to test with the beta and report issues you run into, that would be much appreciated.

I agree that there's not much point doing that in an alpha unless you kind of like playing with shiny new stuff.

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[Yvan256]

I do test with the latest official non-alpha/non-beta versions, so unless someone screws something up pretty badly the websites should still continue to work as with the earlier versions.

Now if only there was a way to detect CSS properties like we can detect objects in javascript, it would be much easier.

Re:Canvas Element and support for border images?

[jesser]

You can get a list of CSS properties supported by a browser by looking at document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(document.documentElement, null). Call .item() on it in a loop to see all of them, or compare .getPropertyValue(...) to null to see if a browser supports a specific one.

Isn't 3.0 still alpha?

[pseudorand]

I don't mind the "awesome bar" so much, but has anyone else noticed that javascript animations are uselessly slow on FF3 for Linux (FF3/Win works fine)? I'll I've got are some scriptaculous Effect.Appear()'s and FF3 takes up 100% CPU until I close it.

Re:Isn't 3.0 still alpha?

[BZ]

Have you filed a bug?

There's a good chance that's a bug in either Firefox, cairo, or your X server. Hard to say which without a testcase, though.

It's a testament to how good Firefox is ...

[arhar]

.. that I've used 2.0.0.8 for years now and haven't ever needed to upgrade.

Re:It's a testament to how good Firefox is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should at least update to 2.0.0.16. It works the same.

Re:Codename? - 'End of the Earth'

[Jerajdai]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiretoko_National_Park
The word "Shiretoko" is an Ainu word meaning "end of the earth".

"Print Selection" still doesn't exist on Linux...

[rickst29]

Yeah, they fixed some little bugs for Windows and Mac. But on Linux, the "print..." dialog doesn't even pretend to give you the opportunity to print "selection".

Your only choices are "all", or "range of pages". A checkbox exists for "current page only", but it can't be selected. Linux remains a 3rd class platform, as far as Mozilla.org is concerned. :(

Opera does a great job with this (so it's not within CUPS or Laserjet support, it's entirely Mozilla's fault.)

BTW, I'm not yet running 3.1 nightlies: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1 - Build ID: 2008070206

it almost ruined my relationship

[citylivin]

Well it goes through your history so if multiple people use the same pc, like say me for porn and my girlfriend for youtube, when she types "yo" a hundred porn sites pop up... She almost broke up with me and made me sware off of porn... FOREVER.

So I guess you could say Ive never been so upset at a feature as the awesome bar. I wish I could take the person that made it and torture them to death, then revive them and torture them again. I can no longer look at porn, on my own computer... *smashes screen*. My gf was respectfull enough not to ever go through my history, but hey! thanks firefox for autoupdate and change default behaviour! lets just PUSH ALL OF THE PORN at her! what a brilliant fucking feature!

Re:it almost ruined my relationship

[Red Flayer]

Well, that seems entirely your fault for browsing porn at sites beginning with "young", you pervert.

Seriously, though, this is why you have multiple users on a machine. I log in as me, my wife logs in as her... no problems. I explain it all away as "for security reasons" since she is less knowledgeable about computers than me... not that it matters, since she enjoys teh pron *almost as much* as me... just not as *often*.

Re:it almost ruined my relationship

[magus_melchior]

I know you're trolling, but in the off chance that this really happened:

portableapps.com

Download a package for her and her only, and she'll never have to see your history/bookmarks/etc. again. The only thing that might mess it up is the automated update feature (which doubtless you can turn off for her).

Of course, this is also your opportunity to strengthen your alleged relationship so you can get lucky with something other than your right hand.

Re:Canvas Element / API

[Spy der Mann]

HTML5 is a working draft, far away from even a Candidate Recommendation. It's a bit early to start implementing

Just the same thing IE devs said about the latest CSS specs.

Mod parent up

[GeneralTao]

Well said.

The awesome bar has a cheesy name, but it's really an overall improvement, though a slightly disruptive one.

I think people are being babies about it.

The Numbers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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

Re:The Numbers

[D Ninja]

You forgot about the best browser ever! IE!

Internet Explorer 7

• Acid 3 - 11/100
• Sunspider - 10000000e57

Ahhh...Internet Explorer. A breath of fresh air, it is.

Re:The Numbers

[Fallingcow]

Hey, it still beats the hell out of IE6. Can't wait till that POS dies.

Re:The Numbers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, to be fair, here are the numbers for the same machine (Sunspider results vary with the system used). Note, the OS in this case is WinXP.

IE 7

• Acid 3 - 12/100
• Sunspider - 178587 (yeah, that's right, wow!)

IE 8 beta

• Acid 3 - 17/100
• Sunspider - 15651

Re:The Numbers

[Daimanta]

With this tempo, acid3 compatibility will be reached in IE20.

Re:The Numbers

[bdash]

If you're not seeing 100/100 on Acid3 with a WebKit nightly build on Mac OS X or Windows you should file a bug report.

Re:The Numbers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If you're not seeing 100/100 on Acid3 with a WebKit nightly build on Mac OS X or Windows you should file a bug report [webkit.org].

I saw 100/100 on an older version of the nightlies, but I assume they had to regress some item temporarily. I'm also sure they run the Acid3 test themselves as part of their regression. Try it yourself.

Text API for the Canvas Element

[radarsat1]

Cool, I hope it supports some kind of markup language though.

Re:Canvas Element / API

[AKAImBatman]

It's a bit early to start implementing

Actually, the whole point of the WHATWG is to try implementing the spec before it's finalized. The idea is that the problems can be found during implementation, then the spec adjusted before it falls into heavy use.

Re:Canvas Element / API

[bunratty]

Yes, it's why Opera and WebKit (Safari) also support the canvas element. I suppose singling out Firefox for criticism will never go out of style.

Selectors API already available

[scarlac]

For those who think the Selectors API is a nice addition: It's already possible, cross browser, with the jQuery javascript library available at:
http://www.jquery.com/

Besides combining XPath with JS it allows for chaining commands, various typical DOM actions such as .remove(), .after()/.before() (insert HTML before and after), .attr(), .html(), .hide(), .show() and others. The frontpage of the site quite nicely demonstrates how to use it.

I have yet to see a project where I don't find jQuery useful. It's small it's lean and it gets the job done.

Re:Selectors API already available

[BZ]

The difference is the speed. The idea is that toolkits like jquery can use querySelectorAll under to hood to speed up their query implementations.

Just to put this in perspective, here are the numbers for three toolkits and the native implementations in a build more or less equivalent to the alpha on http://webkit.org/perf/slickspeed/ :

prototype 1.6.0.2: 16310
jQuery 1.2.3: 36201
ext 2.0: 23310
querySelectorAll: 716

All times in milliseconds. The more complex the query, the bigger the lead querySelectorAll has, generally speaking. For example, for the "div div div" selector, it's about 36 times faster than the fastest of the toolkits, and about 200 times faster than the slowest one.

"Print Selection" does exist on Linux...

[bunratty]

You need to look a bit longer next time. It's in the Options tab in the Print dialog. I suppose the UI could be improved, but the option took me only a few extra seconds to find.

SVG Animation

[gr8_phk]

So where is SVG animation? Canvas is HTML 5, which I don't think is final yet. SVG animation has been a W3C standard for some time now. What's the problem? And yes, I'm going to ask this on slashdot every time a new Firefox is released until it's fixed.

Re:SVG Animation

[larry bagina]

Have you written the code for SVG animation yet? Sure, it takes time and effort, but you have time to complain about it, so what's the problem? And yes, I'm going to ask this on slashdot every time a new Firefox is released until you fix it.

Re:SVG Animation

[bunratty]

SVG animation is available in Firefox using JavaScript or HTML. I suppose you mean SVG animation using SMIL? That's planned for Mozilla 2. I think some SMIL support is needed to pass Acid3, so I would suspect some SMIL support would be coming soon after Firefox 3.1 (in other words, next year).

Re:SVG Animation

[daniel_newton]

it is actually on-track for ff3.1

bug -> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216462

latest ff3.1 status meeting (look for SMIL) -> http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3.1/StatusMeetings/2008-07-22

Solution

[default luser]

Set the following field to true:

browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped

Now it doesn't search your entire browsing history or your bookmarks, just URLs you have actually typed into the bar. You can visit any site you want, and so long as you don't type the address in, it won't show up in the awful bar results.

Not that my girlfriend has a problem with porn. I did this mostly because I have some less open-minded friends who use my computer, and who might be uncomfortable seeing my entire browsing history. I actually did the same thing for my girlfriend's computer, for exactly the same reason.

Seamonkey

[zogger]

Use Seamonkey. You can download and use just the browser if you want to (look around their downloads). It works like you want it, type one letter, gives you the top listings you visited that start with that letter. Type one more letter, it matches and does the same, and so on. Plus, you have one big url bar, not two small ones.

Why FF went to two addy bars is beyond me, less space than anyone else, hides the full urls without hoop jumping meaning checking for a phishing scam is harder. Lame. One big addy bar, two small buttons, search or go, works just fine.

that was the last time

[blade.labs]

i have installed a prefresh software (never did before and did so only based on the slashdot article) maybe i an a n00b, but since i've installed firefox3 and winamp 5.xx (the newest that time) i have seen BSOD (yes, i am a n00b...) on my XP more times in 1 month than... hell! never have seen BSOD on my XP before!! seriously - it is the same situation all over again - have installed ubuntu 8.04 on the machine and it's just sitting there cause the network is not workin' (so it is pretty much useless). i know - it is not impossible to repair, but then they should not say "linux for human beings" cause it is still for the hackers, like any other linux. seriously - NEVER install the newest version of anything (w8 at least a week)

Re:that was the last time

[bunratty]

If Windows is crashing, that's a problem with Windows, drivers, or hardware. An application should never be able to cause a BSOD if those are working correctly.

fix for flash hogging the entire browser?

[Tumbleweed]

Yeah, I know flash doing the hogging is technically a flash problem, but FF shouldn't *allow* it to be possible.

Hopefully now that the Flash specs are entirely open, the open source flash players can advance to the point where you don't have to use Adobe's crappy version.

Does it fix the repaint bug?

[tlhIngan]

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...

stop with the UI get some real features...

[johnjones]

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

Vimperator Awesomebar

[Mantaar]

Those features you're talking about - and basically a lot of what Awesomebar wants to provide have previously been implemented into Vimperator.
I switched from Opera to FF2 for Vimperator, because that's just an Awesomebrowser, not just the bar. Best keyboard support in a browser. Ever. One of the great features of Vimperator is also the :buffers! command (accessible via the 'b' shortcut) that essentially brings Awesomebar's functionality to your tabs - rendering that tab bar unnecessary -- and I've disabled it. Along with all the menu&button-clutter, see the screen shot below.

Screenie.
And while you're wondering... C-i will fire up Vim (gvim -f by default) when you're above an input field, so you can edit your /. reply in a decent text editor, instead of relying on GTK's horrible default capabilities. (of course, that's configurable. You could even put Emacs there. *shudders*)

Re:Canvas Element / API

[MobyDisk]

Thanks to those who replied clarifying. Although this thread just goes to show how many geeks can't answer a question without insulting the intelligence of the person asking it. Pardon me for not knowing the latest HTML draft specifications. Sheesh.

Re:sig

[weierstrass]

what part of "Gnu's Not Unix" don't you understand?

Re:Vimperator Awesomebar

[pugugly]

"Vimperator is a free browser add-on for Firefox, which makes it look and behave like the Vim text editor."

Ummm . . . Goody? From the same wonderful people to add peanut butter and ketchup in one wonderful snack?

Pug

Memory problems still exist

[MilesAttacca]

Are they going to keep trying to plug memory leaks? At first I noticed some optimization of memory use, but now I have the same problem as FF2; give it an hour and even though I only have a couple tabs open, RAM usage is at 300MB. My only addons are Foxmarks, DownThemAll, and Skype.

Re:Preferences Applications empty

[jesser]

I believe you can create new associations as needed (whenever Firefox encounters a new MIME type or protocol). They will then be listed in Preferences > Applications.