Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2

daria42 writes with news that Mozilla has released the second alpha build for Firefox 3.1, codenamed "Shiretoko." The new build includes "support for the HTML 5 <video> element" and the ability to "drag and drop tabs between browser windows." ComputerWorld is running a related story about benchmarks shown by Mozilla's Brendan Eich which indicate that Firefox 3.1 will run Javascript faster than Chrome.

Comments

Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[ShaunC]

Mozilla has released the second alpha build for Firefox 3.1, codenamed "Shiretoko."

I see. Is that why I was yet again presented with a dialog tonight inviting me to "Upgrade to Firefox 3!" even though I've hit the Never button on that same dialog at least twice on this machine over the past few weeks?

If you give me an upgrade option that says "Never," and I choose that option, my expectation is that I will no longer get random dialogs offering the upgrade. Ever. That's sort of the reason I keep clicking "Never" instead of "Later," but Firefox doesn't seem to care.

This is really starting to get annoying.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Anonymous Coward]

That bug was fixed in version 3.0. I recommend you upgrade your browser to fix the bug.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Psychotria]

There is a fix/workaround for this behaviour--make sure that you do not connect to the internet. This way firefox never sees the update and the nag dialog to update never appears.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[ShaunC]

Cool, thanks. I'll get on that right awa

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[zig007]

This is really starting to get annoying.

I suppose you filed a bug report a few weeks ago and no one has done anything about it?
Don't bother to check, I am quite sure you didn't:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453452

This was posted on the 3rd. On the highly unlikely event that it was you that posted that bug, maybe you should give them more than 3 days to do something about it before bashing them on /.?
Also, I would categorize this as a low priority bug(OMFG? Pressing a button AN EXTRA COUPLE OF TIMES? You still alive?), so don't hold your breath.
It is also in the 1.8 branch..

You know one thing I find annoying?
Users that find bugs and never tell you about them.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Psychotria (953670) was meant to be funny it gave me an idea. add firefox's upgrade address to your host file and point it to yourself thus it will not look for an upgrade.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[nightglider28]

My Firefox is at 2.0.0.16. This is an official release (and, as far as I know, the most recent revision to the 2.0 tree). When Mozilla issues a public software update that has passed their internal reviews and release management processes, I don't believe that it's my responsibility to report bugs prior to complaining about them.

While I agree that it's not your job to make sure there are no bugs, it's not realistic to assume that a non-alpha/beta release is perfect. It should be stable and bugs should indeed be few and far between, but it's not going to be a flawless product. You shouldn't have to hound the programmers to get things fixed, but as far as I'm concerned, you have no right to complain about something you can do and have done something to fix.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[ultranova]

DAs I pointed out in a prior post, I'm using an official public release version of Firefox. Not a beta, not a nightly, not an RC. In this capacity, I'm an end user, not a QA tester. Do you actually presume that everyone who uses Firefox should report each bug that they encounter?

If they want it fixed, yes. It is impossible for a programmers to fix a bug they don't know exist, even if it's in an official public release.

What if your grandmother uses Firefox and something doesn't work as she expects?

Then she better tell someone about it, if she expects someone to do something about it, just like she would with any other kind of problem.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... that's got to be one of the quickest and most amazingly silly Godwins I've ever seen.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[sameerds]

My Firefox is at 2.0.0.16.

Have you read this? Seems like they have really started pushing FF3 hard like they said they would!

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Lobster Quadrille]

What if your grandmother uses Firefox and something doesn't work as she expects?

My grandma would probably just click the 'Never' button every once in a while.

If something really gives her problems, she'd call me up. I'd look at it, and file a bug report.

Wow... the system works.

Re:Hey, Mozilla: Learn what "Never" means

[Anonymous Coward]

"... but what other explanation is there for Firefox, Netscape, Windoze, or other programs to keep INSISTING that I MUST upgrade my software immediately OR ELSE face dire consequences?"

That's because morons like you, with vintage software, are responsible for all the hundreds of thousands of bots flooding the net with spam and other nasty stuff.

This version does not include Tracemonkey

[Anik315]

To get a version with Tracemonkey, download a nightly build and follow these instructions:

open a new tab
type about:config and hit enter
read the warning and heed its wisdom
enter jit in the filter field
double click on javascript.options.jit.chrome and javascript.options.jit.content to change their values to true

We ain't dead yet!

[mcrbids]

So here we have the Moz FF team saying: "We ain't dead yet!".

With IE as the undisputed champion, nothing happened. FF brought the "browser war" back, and suddenly IE starts getting new features.

Google's Chrome brings the browser war to a white heat - suddenly FF is being given a run for its money as the undisputed browser feature champion!

Here's what I'd like to see:

1) Process-per-tab. It sucks when some JS in some tab gets hung up, bringing everything else in the browser to its knees! Chrome is the only game in town here.

2) Fast (native-speed) JS execution. (Chrome? FF?)

3) Excellent plugin compatibility. Both FF and IE have this down.

4) Cross Platform support. I'm a Win/Mac/Linux guy, I expect my software to work equally on all three. FF is the clear winner here.

4) Ubiquity. For me, this is FF, because it's the first thing I download after a fresh OS install, regardless of the OS. But for most people, this is still IE.

What am I going to use? Firefox has my money, still. I type this in Chrome, but I usually am not using Windows, so Chrome, Safari, and IE are non-starters for me.

But Chrome makes it obvious: the browser is the next O/S.

Re:Still somewhat disappointed in Firefox!

[lazy_nihilist]

I even have CNN's own plugin for Firefox installed...but live streams will not play! Incidentally, the commercial before the the actual content (which is in Flash), plays fine. When it's over, what one sees is a black screen!

The commercial plays fine, that's all what matters.

Re:Firefox's bottleneck isn't JS

[haruchai]

http://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM_improvements_in_Firefox_3

It seems they have been focusing on extending the DOM support but TraceMonkey will eventually be used to enhance FF's DOM performance

(Excerpt from this page: http://ejohn.org/blog/tracemonkey/)

Right now there isn't any tracing being done into DOM methods (only across pure-JavaScript objects) - but that is something that will be rectified. Being able to trace through a DOM method would successfully speed up, not only, math and object-intensive applications (as it does now) but also regular DOM manipulation and property access.

Re:Eich twists the facts a little

[randomc0de]

I don't like that Eich seems to not give any credit to Adobe at all for their contribution, and on top of that tries to belittle the effort of Google, who are technically paying their sallaries at Mozilla Corp.

FTFA:

This reminds me: TraceMonkey is only a few months old, excluding the Tamarin Tracing Nanojit contributed by Adobe (thanks again, Ed and co.!), which we've built on and enhanced with x86-64 support and other fixes. We've developed TraceMonkey in the open the whole way. And we're as fast as V8 on SunSpider!

and

V8 is great work, very well-engineered, with room to speed up too. (And Chrome looks good to great -- the multi-process architecture is righteous, but you expected no less praise from an old Unix hacker like me.)

Yup, lots of credit-stealing and belittling going on there. Meanwhile, I don't like that you can't even spell "salaries" correctly. You see, I'm new here: I RTFA, point out inaccurate comments, and correct spelling. An unholy trinity I suppose.